How defense agencies can better cope with big data.

• Author: Girard, Ted
• Position: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

* The Defense Information Systems Agency's five-year strategic plan says big data capabilities are becoming essential to modern warfare. Within defense and intelligence agencies, big data holds promise because of the strong potential to broaden and deepen their understanding of pressing issues.

Big data reporting, analysis, visualization, integration and development tools are vitally important for turning sizeable amounts of intelligence data into useful, collaborative information that can be efficiently distributed across military and intelligence communities.

Military leaders need to be able to access a comprehensive view of all of the data available, and the information needs to reach the hands of decision makers before it is old, if not obsolete.

National security agencies need to be able to integrate and deliver data in an agile and secure manner.

Because of the exploding volume of data assets and a growing number of fragmented data sources, it is an ongoing battle for defense and intelligence agencies to access integrated, relevant data for cross-functional use. New data virtualization technology is helping to overcome the challenges resulting from information existing on different platforms and in different environments.

Data virtualization integrates data assets from disparate sources, regardless of the location of the source, in order to create unified, virtual data views for any user or front-end solution such as applications, dashboards, portals, intranet or search.

Big data and data virtualization technologies are evolving rapidly. However, the adoption of data virtualization by defense and intelligence agencies remains a work in progress. Turning big data into actionable insights that can be rapidly disseminated to key users will require overcoming several hurdles that are currently hampering data virtualization from delivering truly transformative results.

One of the obstacles is the government procurement process. Traditionally, because of procurement rules, it takes a long time for government to react to new technology. Today, agencies are under increased pressure to modernize their applications and IT environments. This requires that agencies and contractors think differently. New agile approaches are needed in order to implement innovative technology and news ways to gain efficiencies and drive improvements to project quality and delivery without being labor or budget intensive.

Another issue is the "newness" factor...