BearingPoint’s ‘Hypercube’ shows the devil is in the detail for Big Data

Frankfurt/Paris, January 17, 2013 - In the last 20 years the amount of information available in the world increased by a factor of 100, from 2.6 to 276 billion gigabytes. This poses a problem for businesses as often any chance of insightful decision making is drowned in unnecessary information. A recent report issued by the BearingPoint Institute (www.BearingPointInstitute.com) reveals that while Big Data means firms can now gain more insights and make faster decisions with less risks, the volume, velocity and variability of information creation turn data interpretation into a minefield. The scale of a large data set implies that the noise within it can drown out an increasingly weak signal, leaving managers with a partial interpretation of an incomplete picture.

Businesses are rushing to hire ‘data scientists’ in a bid to provide the skills needed to carve an understanding from big data, “but it is this human layer that is actually the root of inefficiencies”, says Augustin Huret, the Partner managing Hypercube research at BearingPoint. “Their traditional approaches and the tools they use are non-exhaustive, make assumptions and lack the advancement required to interpret data in a meaningful way.” New complex event intelligence tools such as the Hypercube solution BearingPoint offers to its clients can overcome these limitations.

HyperCube Illustration

Complex event intelligence tools such as Hypercube eliminate the bottlenecks caused by a human layer of data
Download the illustrations: leftright

Until recently processing power has been the limiting factor here. However, tasks that in 1999 required three months and a €100m super computer now take 24 hours and cost a fraction of that sum. This allows decision makers to explore entire data sets to find root causes through comprehensible rules and produce meaningful, actionable and immediate insights. Thanks to this convergence of affordable processing power and mathematical science advances, cost effective solutions can now enable companies to discover and describe complex observations, allowing them to become ‘Insight Driven’ organisations.

As processing costs continue to fall, the pool of problems that can be solved cost-effectively through complex event intelligence will broaden - revealing new opportunities to organisations as they shine a light on their Big Data. Thus, BearingPoint has already worked with over two hundred financial services, insurance, retail and healthcare companies using Hypercube to solve a huge range of business challenges, from the optimization of shop openings in new geographies to the anticipation of fraud risks amongst credit card holders.

For more information and to order a copy of the BearingPoint Institute Report please visit: HyperCube - seeing beyond the big (data) picture. Here you will also find a video presenting the key findings of this article.

The report is also available as an iPad app: http://bit.ly/BEIapp

Hypercube at BearingPoint

BearingPoint’s Hypercube is a root cause analysis and complex event intelligence tool, enabling exhaustive analysis of massive data sets to identify new insights. Hypercube enables a big picture view to be established while at the same time, providing an unprecedented understanding of the detail. Hypercube is recognised by industry analyst firms and research bodies such as the IDC and the Institut Pasteur as offering breakthrough potential for organisations.

The BearingPoint Institute

Founded in 2009, the BearingPoint Institute is an incisive, authoritative voice on business-critical topics, which brings together the finest minds from both within and outside the BearingPoint organisation. It strives to:

  • Advise business leaders to understand the evolution of the global economy at a deeper level
  • Explore new thinking, going beyond straightforward “thought leadership”
  • Propose new points of view about strategy and organisational change, and stimulate debate among its readership

This is achieved by offering practical, real-world advice from:

  • A leadership team composed of senior BearingPoint Partners, representing geographical diversity and a wealth of capabilities
  • An independent Advisory Board formed by recognised business leaders and academics
  • Studies made by experts illustrated with real-life customer cases
About BearingPoint

BearingPoint delivers business consulting with management and technology capabilities. As an independent firm with European roots and global reach BearingPoint serves leading companies and public sector organisations world-wide to align and optimise processes, IT and operating models with business strategy. Driven by a strong entrepreneurial mindset and desire to create long-term partnerships, BearingPoint’s consultants are committed to delivering excellence and value to their clients. The firm’s approach to working with clients is highly collaborative and designed to improve business performance, from strategy through to execution. BearingPoint currently employs 3,500 people in 15 countries.

For more information, please visit: www.bearingpoint.com

Press contact

Alexander Bock
Global Senior Manager Communications
Telephone: +49 89 540338029