Advancing Beyond Big Data Deployment: Exploring the Next Frontier

The world we are living in is exploding with data. Over the last decade, business leaders have deployed technologies to effectively manage the mountains of data available company-wide by storing and analyzing it in various ways that are beneficial for the business — also known as “Big Data”.

Ever since the term “Digital Economy” hit the mainstream, businesses are struggling with ways to generate value from the plethora of data available on different systems and channels. You’re sitting on “Big Data” which is helping you make valuable decisions for your business. What’s next?

According to many experts, Data is a new wealth and “Data Monetization” is one of the ways — but not the only way — to capitalize on the data available within the organization. When it comes to data monetization, APIs are a no-brainer. If implemented right, APIs play a fundamental role in generating value out of the data in several other ways:

Offer Data as a Service

One way of generating monetary value from the data is by exposing it to the outer world: developer communities, startups, and other businesses, in the form of APIs. APIs have been around for many years but they are mainly used as integration tools between two or more applications. However, now businesses can make their data available in the form of a scalable package that makes it easier for the consumer such as developers to use them when they need it.

A recent example is AccuWeather, an Apigee customer that exposes the weather data to an ecosystem of external partners working in several business verticals including but not limited to connected cars, wearable devices, and home automation.

Help Your Employees to Improve Productivity

In addition to data monetization through external exposure, providing instant access via APIs to valuable and relevant data to employees is another way to generate value from the data. By doing so, businesses can not only improve upon the already present services but can also accelerate in-house development for innovative offerings based on the available data.

Citrix, a leading desktop and application virtualization services provider and an Apigee customer, is leveraging APIs to boost its internal productivity and save employees’ time. Previously at Citrix, Product keys were generated and uploaded manually. With so many available products, simply managing the product keys was nearly a full-time job. Now a simple API takes customer requests for additional Citrix licenses and generates a new key on the fly.

Data Analysis for Actionable Insights

Availability of data for internal and external usages for improved productivity and revenue generation can be further optimized by implementing intelligence to it. With Machine Learning, the API management framework helps businesses to drive better and more valuable business outcomes from their data and data sharing. It not only offers analytical tools for the shared data between channels, but it also helps in the prevention of it malicious attacks through bot detection.

Final Thoughts:

According to Forbes, by 2020, the accumulated volume of big data will increase from 4.4 zettabytes to roughly 44 zettabytes or 44 trillion GB. With this kind of radical growth, it becomes impossible for businesses to survive without finding and deploying ways to generate value from the available data. If you’re looking for ways to develop your data strategy, get in touch with Abacus Consulting to understand the challenges and define the way forward.