JUNE 2016CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8The Influence Of Big DataA content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver web pages and other web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.The world is rapidly heading towards a future when the vast majority of the population have access to the internet, have an e-mail address, and a PC or a smartphone or both. This means that for the first time, it is possible for a company to consider selling to a consumer market that literally consists of billions of individuals. The size and geographical location of the company in the physical world is no longer relevant. It is all about your presence in the digital world.A Sales and Marketing function will obviously analyze and segment their marketplace, and their target would be to be as granular as possible. First generation websites introduced multi language capabilities in order to allow segmentation by country. But of course the ambition today is to be able to segment the global marketplace down to the level of a single individual. This requires tailoring the content provided over the web for millions, potentially billions, of individuals. Ten years ago this would have been impossible, but today the advances made in Big Data and CDN are changing this “impossible dream” into a “realistic possibility”. The Loopholes InvolvedSo the first challenge for IT is Big Data as we attempt to build accurate data on all our customers. This data can come from external sources, existing web usage patterns and corporate applications, and it all needs to be integrated and analyzed in order to build up accurate profiles for all our customers. Obviously this problem is greatly reduced for a B2B market as opposed to a B2C market. Assuming that accurate profiles can be constructed using Big Data platforms and their associated analytics platforms, Colin Boyd, VP & CIO, Joy Global IncStepping into IT Mainstream with Advancement in Big Data and CDNIn My Opinion
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