Big Data is next wave for the IT industry. This was echoed in several keynote speeches during the global IT storage major EMC's annual event EMC World 2012 held at Las Vegas, the US.

To capitalise on this Big Data revolution, EMC recently unveiled a slew of products at its annual event.

The company believes that with the advent of cloud computing and virtualisation, IT departments can break out of the domination of legacy applications. In a conversation with Business line , Mr Sanjay Mirchandani, Chief Information Officer and COO, Global Centres of Excellence, EMC Corporation, outlined the contours of this emerging trend.

How do decisions taken by CIOs like you impact the business operations of the company?

There has never been a better time to be a CIO or to be in IT. For years, IT departments were slaves to big iron and legacy applications, and reluctantly succumbed to the proliferation of shadow IT in our environments.

All that has changed in the wake of virtualisation, cloud computing and Big Data. The foundation we built enables us to break the traditional approach to IT to standardise our infrastructure, rationalise applications, and deliver services that better enable this transformation.

What difference does Big Data make to earlier IT solutions such as data warehousing and business intelligence tools?

The unprecedented volume, variety, velocity and complexity of today's Big Data are too much for yesterday's data warehousing and business intelligence tools. What previously took us months to generate from sensors and sources inside and outside our organisation, now takes us hours or days to generate and analyse this data to make real-time business decisions.

What is your advice to Indian CIOs on Big Data adoption?

Predictive analytics are not only beneficial but also addictive. As CIOs, we have an opportunity to better understand the data throughout the organisation and advise the business on how to mine and analyse the information to make more agile business decisions. I recommend that you feed this addiction by digging deeper into Big Data and broadening your horizons as data scientists. After all, we're no longer the gatekeepers of IT…we need to be the brokers of value.

What role has the EMC India Centre of Excellence played in developing products launched at the EMC World 2012?

While I wish to be discreet on the role in relation to our newly announced products and upgrades, our global Centres of Excellence are microcosms of EMC – each offering a variety of innovation, service and R&D functions to further our presence and business in these regions. They are an integral part of how we build and deliver value. We look forward to working more closely to bring more industry-leading products and services to our customers in India.

What is EMC's strategy for R&D and where does India CoE fit into this strategy?

Our Centres of Excellence are integral to our innovation. As a global technology company, we continue to invest in enhancing our products and developing innovative new products to meet our customer's evolving needs.

We accomplish this by investing in R&D at our state-of-the-art development facilities worldwide. As a company, we spent approximately $2.2 billion towards research and development in 2011.

> jaish@thehindu.co.in

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