Which is the Hottest 7-letter Word?

Vendors often say that every organization needs to have a big data plan, but some CIOs still tend to disagree.

A CIO, who had donned many senior tech leadership roles across verticals, told Dataquest, when we approached him for this story on ‘tips and tricks' on big data, "Nothing to offer on big data."

"Currently, it is all air to us," a statement like that kind hits the nail ‘bang on the head'.

Clearly big data or for that matter any emerging tech trend until it manifests across enterprises, need to pass through hype, critique, adoption, and finally harvesting the benefits.

CIOs and CTOs have 3 different school of thoughts on big data:

a section dismisses as hype and says show me the RoI, the second category says what's new, it has existed for years-it's a new wine in old bottle. The third category, whom the vendors love a lot, says big data makes for pervasive impact and it touches all in many possible ways.

While we respect the criticism but at the same time, let's give a fair chance to vendors as well and ponder about the big data advantages

and how you can make it work for your enterprise. But if at all a CIO considers that big data might have some positive impact, then he need

a well laid out plan of action.

Where do you Start?

Before delving into the ‘how to' part, let's look at why big data plan is must if you are a CIO. Recently, in a presentation, at the Nasscom Leadership Forum, on the multi-pronged impact of big data, Manoj Singh, COO, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, said:"The big data market in early

2012 is estimated to be $5 bn and is expected to reach $23.8 bn by 2016, growing at a CAGR of 31.6%."

Irrespective of whether you are a skeptic or supporter-no one can deny that data is growing, and more the storage is merrier, but more the data ‘is not merrier' and this is where big data comes to play.

So if you are a CIO struggling to find a way out of the data maze and wanting to create a big data plan and a strategy, then according to

experts like Singh, a multi-pronged actionable roadmap will help taming the data.

He has the following advice which he called ‘options for action'.

Action 1: Start with highly specific questions about the business problems you are trying to solve.

Action 2: Artistry comes from fine tuning discipline with the need for agility-make sure the technology choices you make can support such flexibility.

Action 3: Focus on force-organizational silos to understand your strategic goals.

Action 4: Build your bench with left-brained data scientists.

So clearly, it's thing like data due diligence to right mix of technology

to the relevant skills to mine the data and profit from it in real-time.