In September of 1962, John F. Kennedy articulated his now famous vision that launched the U.S. space program: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade." These words set into motion a space race that culminated in Neil Armstrong's moon walk seven years later on July 20, 1969. The full text of Kennedy's '62 speech reveals that his space challenge was part of a larger theme, namely the breathtaking pace of technological change being harnessed for the future. Kennedy's was just one of several visions about scientific progress in the '60s that would transform the world.
Another was a powerful prediction that completely changed the technology industry and its economics. In 1965 Gordon Moore, one of the founding fathers of the computer industry (he co-founded Intel), created one of the most widely known principles in the field of IT. Moore's Law predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double about every two years. It further promised lower costs and increased innovation as a direct outcome.
To maintain status quo in today's marketplace, it is imperative for business leaders to develop proactive strategies for technology and data management based on Moore's prediction, including: 1) Invest wisely - find the right strategic partners; 2) Start small, learn and gain some early wins; 3) Organize for success; and 4) Think differently about data.
For forty years the industry has focused on the cost/productivity side of Moore's prediction, for the most part ignoring his more subtle but also more powerful message about the accelerating pace of innovation. In hindsight it's not surprising that the pace of innovation and our ever increasing appetite for technology have driven overall IT costs higher. This is now creating pressure on operating plans and tension between CIOs and CFOs of corporations whose CEOs had expected IT costs would be declining because of the populist belief regarding the trajectory of the IT industry.
The availability of better technology and the insights it makes possible are what feeds our growing appetite for data. Companies today collect more data than ever before; they use powerful algorithms to find patterns in it to solve all sorts of real-life problems that were previously unsolvable. A 2008 International Data Corporation (IDC) study projected that, in 2010, the world would create more than 1,200 exabytes of data (one exabyte is one quintillion bytes of data). This projection proved true, forcing retailers and fast moving consumer goods manufacturers to become increasingly proficient at finding new insights in large amounts of data. Historically, data was aggregated because the complexity of queries required it, or because disaggregated data didn't exist or was too costly.
Traditionally, companies have utilized data to understand what happened yesterday or today. To compete in the marketplace, data is now being used to predict what will happen in the future. To do so, companies are increasingly capturing real-time disaggregated data and analyzing information flows in real time, improving their ability to accurately project the future. In his books The Power of Now and The Power to Predict, Vivek Ranadive describes an evolution over time to event-driven business models where the need for real-time information is creating a "data explosion." Ranadive reaffirms that CPU, memory and storage costs have declined over the past 40 years as Moore predicted, but the costs to store and process exponentially increasing amounts of data, and the need for smart people to analyze it, have increased at the same rate. This is the paradox of Moore's Law.
As companies consider strategies for managing and productizing data, there are multiple needs to be met. At The Nielsen Company, our goal is to provide our customers with direct access to real-time disaggregated data, allowing them to better predict future outcomes in their businesses. We proactively invest in products and processes that truly differentiate our business and allow our clients to combine data in ways never before possible. Recognizing that no one company has the human or financial capital to go it alone, we nurture strategic partnerships with world-class hardware and software companies to help us deliver our vision. Our approach is to start with small projects, learn fast, fail faster, get some wins, and apply learnings. We ignore organizational boundaries, assembling empowered teams that are rewarded for innovation, quality and speed. Our culture embodies a relentless focus on the quality and timeliness of the data we provide to customers.
Moore's Law foresaw an era of greater innovation, the specifics of which were understandably blurry in the '60s. Today, innovation drives clients to demand insights faster and faster and to collect more and more real-time data. I meeting this demand, IT departments have to spend more, despite lower component costs and increased performance. At the end of the day, Moore's Law, which has been a catalyst for major transformation of business, government and science, may require a reinterpretation.
When Kennedy articulated his vision about space in 1962, he acknowledged that the journey would not be without risk. He recognized that we were venturing into areas that were not well understood. Just three years later, before the microprocessor even existed, Gordon Moore made an equally compelling prediction that would define the modern history of technology. Fast forward to today: despite the visible accomplishments of the past forty years, the future of the U.S. space program appears somewhat uncertain. The technology industry, which has also enjoyed four decades of unprecedented growth, thanks in part to Gordon Moore, is now venturing into uncharted territory as we begin to address the accelerating demand for real-time, disaggregated data.
Mitchell Habib is Chief Operating Officer for The Nielsen Company. He has more than 25 years of experience leading global organizations, specializing in information architecture, business process reengineering, organizational development, IT strategy & execution, new product introduction, sourcing and change management. Mitchell is regularly asked to share his expertise and thought leadership with major audiences worldwide.
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