Datawatch CEO: Big Data Getting Even Bigger; Technology Evolving Very Quickly

In December of 2013, International Data Corporation conducted a study forecasting that big data will grow at a 27% compound annual growth rate through 2017, saying it expects “strong growth over the next five years.”

To shed some light on this fast-growing phenomenon, Michael Morrison, President and CEO of Datawatch (NASDAQ: DWCH) recently joined Financial Sense for an interview, where he explained how big data is evolving very quickly and “it’s only going to get bigger.”

“The market is moving so quickly. I mean the things you can do to capture data today—it’s almost on a week to week basis—but clearly what we can capture today compared to 3 or 4 years ago, you would not have been able to legislate properly. It’s just moving so quick.”

Morrison explained how every industry around the world is generating massive amounts of information through sensors, web traffic, stock trades, RFID tags, and medical devices that can now be processed and visualized in real-time, a feat that was difficult even just a few years ago.

Big data is often defined by the three V’s: volume, velocity, and variety—there’s lots of it, it moves very fast, and usually comes from a large range of inputs. What Datawatch and other big data companies do is help convert this massive amount of information into meaningful results.

Morrison cited how one of Datawatch’s large German customers is investing heavily in smart technology for their cars that will automatically integrate drivers’ personal data and notify them of relevant info in a surrounding area.

“If you’re driving down Broadway in Manhattan in a rental car and you are a Marriot rewards customer and you’re driving by a Marriot, they know enough to pop up on your screen in the car: here’s a special deal if you want to pull in right now as one of our preferred customers… That’s pulling all that data from you, your Marriot rewards card, your rental car, the hotel itself—there’s some fascinating things that companies are putting in place right now.”

With how fast things are moving, some of it can be a bit scary and problematic as well.

Morrison notes how high frequency trading is a “great example of a Big Data use-case today” where the technology has outstripped the ability to regulate it: “in this particular case, the issue is all around the latency—the speed of the data. One trader is trying to get in front of the other to try and understand where the bets are being placed so they can get an unfair advantage in the market. And that’s something that didn’t exist 5 or 7 years ago.”

As Michael Morrison and Financial Sense host Jim Puplava walked listeners through a long list of the postive and negative ways big data is being used in the world today, Morrison commented that there’s a “delicate balance in the long-term what everybody does with this largely publicly available information, but just having the ability to collect it and make meaningful use out of it, in most cases, is going to be quite beneficial for the economy.”

What do you think?

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