Letter from Chairman
Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink
“Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink”. These words, nearly 2 centuries old, vividly describe a real problem we face today with Data. Enterprises are thirsting for Insights while drowning in volumes of Data — the very resource they need to understand their business, their customers, their products and the markets they operate.
My work’s passion has been around AI, Data, and drawing workable insights from the idle Data to advance our businesses and lives. For three decades, I have been privileged and honored to participate in ventures where Data unquestionably proved to be radically transformative. A strong belief in this radical power of Data was the reason I founded Open Insights in 2008 – intending to democratize the notion of “Data as an asset” and enable all enterprises to reap benefits from Data, AI, and ML/Data Science.
At NASA/JPL, I witnessed how leveraging Data in science revolutionizes what we can achieve within the scientific disciplines. While at Microsoft, I saw the applications of leveraging Data in business and was also deeply immersed in the ways AI/ML and Data Science can fit into products, servers, and BI systems. As Yahoo! acquired my second startup after I left Microsoft, we adopted the title Chief Data Officer for the first time. Apart from helping generate billions of dollars in new value from Data, I had the privilege to participate in the creation of the BigData platform Hadoop, an open-source framework aimed at making the use of Unstructured Data easier, faster, and more economical.
Over 90% of Data in any organization is Unstructured. Yet most database technology only addresses Structured Data.
At Barclays, I saw first-hand how so many of the problems in automation, process improvement, and customer journey insights are fundamentally dependent on managing and understanding the Data at our fingertips. Most recently, at several telcos, including MTN, Africa’s largest mobile telecom company, Open Insights has played key roles in making Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) a practical reality, leveraging telco Data to create new revenue streams in the consumer and enterprise spaces.
Sadly, Data in most enterprises are neither being valued nor managed as precious assets.
Instead, Data is effectively a liability, un-utilized in a limbo state, acting as a cost center, and source of risk: vulnerable to external hacks or internal leaks.
However, most enterprises are not able to reap the benefits of Data as an asset – only to create a backdrop for the all-too-familiar story of how and why Data came to be viewed as a liability. It’s a story that carries a sting and prevents many enterprises from moving forward and engaging with their Data in new ways. It’s a story of how companies sought assistance to leverage their Data, and how benefits promised to them were never delivered. Exorbitant costs, disappointments, and setbacks of those failures are still acute in many cases. Sadly, many enterprises remain frozen in time, disconnected from the very real opportunities that exist for extracting value from their Data assets. For them, Data Architecture, Data Governance, or Data Standards and Quality are still like a distant mirage.
This brings to mind yet another apt quote from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner — a verse that expresses the reality of Data projects in many organizations and their overwhelming sense of being unable to move forward:
I am often asked: “Why Open Insights?” We are a team committed to realizing the vision of “Data Under Control, Driving Growth.” We want to change the dynamic emanating from past failures as well as from the new ones which are still progressing today. This change is more urgently needed today, as digital transformation has taken us to a new set of challenges. We are standing on the cusp of a new evolution:
The need to successfully create value out of Data is thus greater than ever before. Yet, with few exceptions, most enterprises do not recognize nor understand what this means.
We are here to change this dynamic for good and we are working with enterprises around the world to turn Data into working productive assets. Every Open Insights collaboration is our commitment to empowering our partners with an in-depth understanding of the Economy of Interactions. We strategically leverage their Data in response to this new economy by providing niche expertise and guidance on recognizing the new Data opportunities that help them achieve unprecedented relevance with stakeholders, markets, and customers.
The cumulative and diverse professional expertise of our team is multi-disciplinary, allowing us to bring unique combinations of skills, experience, and thereby hidden insights. Our passion is to boost our clients’ businesses through Data-driven insights and actions.
Finally, when we speak of Data journeys, it is important to understand how to de-risk these journeys. We have managed to address many Data challenges through a de-risking and goal-oriented DaaS approach, an architecture that ensures that the tapped Data becomes a reliable and easy to use utility. We make it acutely economical by avoiding the waste in chasing, wrangling, cleaning, and questioning Data rather than putting it to work.
On a parting note, we welcome all the possible opportunities to be your trusted partner on the exciting Data voyage ahead.
Want to turn your Data into an Asset?
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