📊 The value of streaming data

Data in motion, often in the form of streaming data, is becoming increasingly

important to companies needing to make decisions when speed is a critical

factor. If you need to react quickly to a situation, having the capability to ana-

lyze data in real time may mean the difference between either being able to

react to change an outcome or to prevent a poor result. The challenge with

streaming data is to extract useful information as it is created and transported

before it comes to a resting location. Streaming data can be of great value to

your business if you can take advantage of that data when it is created or when

it arrives at your business.

You need to process and analyze the streaming data in real time so that you

can react to the current state of the data — while in motion and before it is

stored. You need to have some knowledge of the context of this data and how

it relates to historical performance. And you need to be able to integrate this

information with traditional operational data. The key issue to remember is

that you need to have a clear understanding of the nature of that streaming

data and what results you are looking for. For example, if your company is

a manufacturer, it will be important to use the data coming from sensors to

monitor the purity of chemicals being mixed in the production process. This

is a concrete reason to leverage the streaming data. However, in other situa-

tions, it may be possible to capture a lot of data, but no overriding business

requirement exists. In other words, just because you can stream data doesn’t

mean that you always should.

How can you use streaming data to change your business? In the following

sections, we look at how organizations in several industries are finding ways

to gain value from data in motion. In some situations, these companies are

able to take data they already have and begin to use it more effectively. In

other situations, they are collecting data that they were not able to collect

before. Sometimes organizations can collect much more of the data that they

had been only collecting snapshots of in the past. These organizations are

using streaming data to improve outcomes for customers, patients, city resi-

dents, or perhaps for mankind. Businesses are using streaming data to influ-

ence customer decision making at the point of sale.