Thought Leaders in Big Data: Paul Nelson, Chief Architect at Search Technologies (Part 2)

Paul Nelson: Right now, we’re seeing an explosion of chatbots. We’re getting a lot of customers who are coming to us asking for semantic search. They want to do semantic search so that I can type in something like “red shirts” and I will find actual shirts in the color red or in colors similar to red. I could type something as complex as, “What is the status of order number 32?” It’ll actually tell me where that is.

I can ask questions like, “How do I back up my cellphone?” The software will understand what you’re trying to achieve and take you directly to the instructions for how to back up your cellphone. Those are interesting use cases that have a strong component of >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Paul Nelson, Chief Architect at Search Technologies (Part 1)

This discussion highlights a set of open problems in Big Data.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Search Technologies.

Paul Nelson: I’m the Chief Architect for Search Technologies. Search Technologies is a global search engine and Big Data firm. We specialize in search engines, search engine installation, and anything related to data processing. We have some 200 consultants around the world, and we also do a bit of product development usually to fill in key missing components in the industry. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Ten-X VP of Data Products, Sheridan Hitchens (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Why don’t we take the real estate constraint off and listen to what you have to say about the movement of Big Data and the industry trend in general.

Sheridan Hitchens: This may sound controversial. I work in a technology function. The technology side of things is getting pretty good. The whole Hadoop ecosystem is a lot more mature than it was when I first started doing some of this stuff seven years ago. We’ve got lots of good real-time streaming stuff with Kafka and Spark. The technology around that is maturing. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Ten-X VP of Data Products, Sheridan Hitchens (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What trends do you see in data usage in the real estate market?

Sheridan Hitchens: It’s interesting. There’re a couple of things that stand out for me. People are increasingly aware that having good data is instrumental. For many people in many companies, buying a piece of real estate is a really big deal. It’s not like buying a $15 CD or a book. You’re typically spending hundreds of thousands on a specific asset.

You want to be as sure as you can that you’re pricing correctly. You want to make sure that you have all the information about the property and neighborhood. There’s an increasing realization that making sure that we get the >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Ten-X VP of Data Products, Sheridan Hitchens (Part 1)

This discussion focuses on Big Data in the real estate industry.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and Ten-X.

Sheridan Hitchens: I’ve been in the industry for about 20 years. I started off my career with Procter & Gamble. I was in strategy consulting for a long while. For the last 12 years, I’ve been in the Internet space, primarily in leading product and data groups.

For the last five years, I’ve been heading up our data products group at Ten-X, formerly called auction.com. That >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Ashish Sharma, Principal at Axtria (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: If you put yourself at a 30,000-foot level, what do you see? What are the open problems in the industry? What are the white spaces in the industry?

Ashish Sharma: If I were to focus on these two industries, there is a strong need that is getting defined and driven by business. Businesses are now saying, “We are buying certain datasets and making investments into acquiring data, but I have difficulty including them into my studies unless you focus on data infrastructure being modernized.” >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Ashish Sharma, Principal at Axtria (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If you were to look at penetration of these kinds of sensor-driven Big Data applications, how many hospitals are adopting stuff like that? What is the market penetration?

Ashish Sharma: I don’t have any tangible data that I can comment on. If I’m speaking at certain conferences, I run into people who are involved with some early stage discoveries around these. If I were to compare Q2 of 2016 versus Q2 of 2017, I’m seeing a 30% to 40% uptake on those discoveries, topic discussions, and research studies being published. That suggests that there is definite increase in that market. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Ashish Sharma, Principal at Axtria (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Are you saying that your primary value add is managing the infrastructure of data processing?

Ashish Sharma: Yes, but a lot more beyond infrastructure. There are a lot more data sources available than ever before. These are growing at an exponential rate especially for life sciences and financial companies. I’m using the term financial companies very loosely. I’m referring to insurance, banking, and capital markets.

You need to be able to experiment and explore these new data sources to uncover whatever value or competitor advantage that >>>