'Big data provides major benefits to firms and clients'

By Gokhan Ergocun

ANKARA

New Internet-based information technologies -- such as big data, the Internet of things (IoT), and blockchain -- provide solutions in a number of areas, from money transfers to marketing, and their importance grows every day, according to a top Silicon Valley executive.

"Data itself is not very important or decisive other than its impact on storage infrastructure demands. However, the information that can be extracted from the data is extremely important," Gokce Bayindir, senior sales manager at Oracle Cloud Systems, told Anadolu Agency exclusively on Wednesday.

He said big data can help people with better personalization of data to create multi-faceted views of existing predefined models, with the potential creation of missing angles for a better custom-tailored approach to treat each customer as an individual, not a mass marketing group.

"This will provide an additional competitive edge and ability to create brand new approaches for companies to their customers. This is the real essence why big data became so popular in the era of personalized choices," he added.

On big data's potential, he underlined that it would provide major benefits to both companies and their customers.

"Companies can benefit by starting to know their internal and external customers better with a multi-dimensional and faceted view which can help them create new services and products, while customers can enjoy custom-tailored products and services that address their real behavior, expectations, and challenges," he said.

Explaining big data's operating logic, he said companies tend to create market sectors to address, mainly based on some logical filters and potential profiles of the target market.

"In such a case of addressing a sector of highly distinguished customers, it would be wise to use a filter set of 'Male, Oxford-graduated, over the age of 50, married and have children, have pets, above a certain wealth level' to guarantee the satisfaction level from the results. However, you’ll have both Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne to match all these criteria and still not likely be interested in the same products or services at all. That’s where we need additional insights from big data to tailor these sectors with much finer tuning," he said.

Touching on other web-based technologies, he said: “The Internet of things is also creating its own commercial use cases, technologies and sectors to operate and implement solutions, and blockchain is a technology that’s created as a totally opposite alternative to the centralized commercial records of transactions in a distributed environment by eliminating any single source of the track keeper, but distributing this functionality among many separate and independent track keepers."

On privacy issues, he said people's very personal data is being kept in the data centers of many companies or service providers such as financial institutions, telecoms, and governmental bodies, who are all obligated to keep this data safe.

"And the data or information you’re sharing on social media is totally under your free will and responsibility," he added.

Oracle, a software service provider, is one of the world’s leading database businesses, with experience spanning decades.