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04-07-2013, 08:05 AM
Whoare the likely beneficiaries...
S'pore aims to be big data hub
IDA wants to attract firms and scientists, given huge potential of big data analysis
Published on Jul 04, 2013
By Grace Chng Senior Correspondent
SINGAPORE aims to be a big data hub in South-east Asia by tapping into databases here and enabling businesses to make better decisions from the information gathered, according to the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).
"We're seeing foreign gaming, media and entertainment companies with regional offices in Singapore hubbing their customer insights here. They will be making their big data decisions here," said Mr Andrew Khaw, IDA's senior director for industry development group.
Big data - and the sub-categories of business analytics and data analytics - refers to the massive data held in public and corporate databases including information culled from social networks, e-mail messages, surveillance videos and other places.
An in-depth analysis of big data can guide companies to make decisions, such as tailoring TV shows and selling suitable insurance products for the different demographic groups.
In particular, the size of the business analytics market is expected to surge to US$123billion (S$155billion) by 2015, according to research firm IDC.
Given the enormous potential here for insights arising from big data analysis, Singapore wants to attract big data companies and data scientists to crunch the voluminous amount of data collected, said Mr Khaw. In turn, big data will help the local IT industry and businesses become more productive and competitive, he added.
While businesses here are increasingly interested in big data, they may not have the capability to tap its potential, said Mr Khaw.
In the United States, he added, new big data start-ups have helped companies gain valuable insights from the aggregated data, and IDA aims to help companies here in the same way.
As a start, it launched the Data Innovation Challenge last week by inviting data scientists from around the world to provide solutions to big data problems.
Data scientists taking part in the challenge will be tapping data sets from both the public and private sectors.
From the public sector alone, there are more than 8,000 data sets that are available for these scientists to access.
IDA will also work with five firms here to define big data problems for the scientists to brainstorm solutions. So far, four firms have signed up for the challenge: health-care company Medtronic, online grocer RedMart, online digital agency WPP and material science manufacturer DSM Engineering Plastics.
IDA hopes to generate about 20 workable ideas from the challenge, of which seven will be used to build commercially viable prototypes over the next few months.
Mr Khaw hopes the challenge will showcase Singapore as a place to build solutions from big data in areas like financial services and insurance, health care, manufacturing, advertising and marketing.
chngkeg@sph.com.sg
S'pore aims to be big data hub
IDA wants to attract firms and scientists, given huge potential of big data analysis
Published on Jul 04, 2013
By Grace Chng Senior Correspondent
SINGAPORE aims to be a big data hub in South-east Asia by tapping into databases here and enabling businesses to make better decisions from the information gathered, according to the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).
"We're seeing foreign gaming, media and entertainment companies with regional offices in Singapore hubbing their customer insights here. They will be making their big data decisions here," said Mr Andrew Khaw, IDA's senior director for industry development group.
Big data - and the sub-categories of business analytics and data analytics - refers to the massive data held in public and corporate databases including information culled from social networks, e-mail messages, surveillance videos and other places.
An in-depth analysis of big data can guide companies to make decisions, such as tailoring TV shows and selling suitable insurance products for the different demographic groups.
In particular, the size of the business analytics market is expected to surge to US$123billion (S$155billion) by 2015, according to research firm IDC.
Given the enormous potential here for insights arising from big data analysis, Singapore wants to attract big data companies and data scientists to crunch the voluminous amount of data collected, said Mr Khaw. In turn, big data will help the local IT industry and businesses become more productive and competitive, he added.
While businesses here are increasingly interested in big data, they may not have the capability to tap its potential, said Mr Khaw.
In the United States, he added, new big data start-ups have helped companies gain valuable insights from the aggregated data, and IDA aims to help companies here in the same way.
As a start, it launched the Data Innovation Challenge last week by inviting data scientists from around the world to provide solutions to big data problems.
Data scientists taking part in the challenge will be tapping data sets from both the public and private sectors.
From the public sector alone, there are more than 8,000 data sets that are available for these scientists to access.
IDA will also work with five firms here to define big data problems for the scientists to brainstorm solutions. So far, four firms have signed up for the challenge: health-care company Medtronic, online grocer RedMart, online digital agency WPP and material science manufacturer DSM Engineering Plastics.
IDA hopes to generate about 20 workable ideas from the challenge, of which seven will be used to build commercially viable prototypes over the next few months.
Mr Khaw hopes the challenge will showcase Singapore as a place to build solutions from big data in areas like financial services and insurance, health care, manufacturing, advertising and marketing.
chngkeg@sph.com.sg
