IBM Shen Xiaowei: China opportunities in the big Data age

Recently, the IBM China Research Institute Dean Shen Xiaowei recently received an interview with Xinhua news agency reporter, said that large data is one of the important directions of future information technology change, China is facing unprecedented opportunities, and large data will play an important role in promoting China's economic transformation.

In an interview with reporters at the second Carnegie-Mellon Summit in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Shen Xiaowei said that over the past 50 years, information technology has contributed to the transformation of the entire human society and lifestyle, and that there has been a major breakthrough in information technology every 15 to 20. And 20 years since the Internet revolution in the late 90, he believes that big data will be one of the important directions for the next major breakthrough in information technology.

Shen Xiaowei says big data includes data generated by social media, audio, video, image data, and data from the Internet of things. Compared with the traditional data generated by commercial transaction, large data has the characteristics of mass, rapidity, diversity and uncertainty, and the scale is exponential growth, which brings many challenges to data collection, storage, organization, query and management.

Shen Xiaowei pointed out that the key to big data is not "big", but in the mining of the value, "it is like oil as a strategic resource." He says big data has been applied in industries such as healthcare, education, retailing and transportation. For example, in retailing, analysis of large data can enable retailers to grasp the dynamics of sales in real time, quickly adjust inventory, and develop more accurate and effective marketing strategies, so that ultimately consumers have an unprecedented influence on business decision-making, which will profoundly change the way traditional industries operate and greatly improve the efficiency of the industry.

Shen Xiaowei that research on large data has just begun and that Chinese companies are at the same starting line as foreign companies, so China faces unprecedented opportunities and is expected to lead global technological trends in this area for three reasons:

First, many of the problems facing China's economic development, including infrastructure construction, environmental protection, food safety and other challenges, require large data to provide a better solution in this innovative way. The huge demand objectively provides many practical opportunities for the study of China's large data.

Second, the size of China's population and economy determines that China's big data is the largest in the world, can provide many innovative perspectives for large data research, but also means that China's big data analysis solutions will also apply to other countries, which will provide a rare opportunity for the transition from "Made in China" to "China Creation".

Third, at present, the world lacks the big data field technical personnel and the commercial talented person, and China's broad platform for large data development and application is conducive to the rapid development of the leader in this field, while promoting the emergence of a group of large data on the formation of entrepreneurial enterprises, through enterprises, research institutes and institutions of higher learning cooperation, China is poised to stand at the forefront of technology in big data fields.

Shen Xiaowei that big data will also play an important role in promoting China's economic transformation. Firstly, the analysis of large data can help solve the problems of housing, education and transportation in the development of urbanization in China. For example, the real-time collection and analysis of traffic flow data can guide motorists to choose the best route and improve the urban traffic conditions. Second, through the study of large data to promote the steel, retail and other traditional industries upgrade to high-end value chain development. Third, the application of large data can help China to develop a rapid foothold in strategic emerging industries, consolidate and enhance competitive advantage.