Peter Griffiths, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Solutions and Technology at CA Technologies recently discussed big data with Sneha Jha at CIO India. The following is an excerpt of the interview. Read the full article here.

Big data is the newest star in the technology firmament. As CIOs scramble to manage the avalanche of data hitting enterprises, they are beginning to take a serious view of the Big Data Conundrum. But will it be the guiding star for enterprises or should it be categorized in the evolutionary pantheon? Sneha Jha spoke to Peter Griffiths, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Solutions and Technology, CA Technologies to find out more about the newest buzzword that has entered the technology lexicon.

Certain vendors have been touting Big Data as the next-big-problem for IT to solve? How much do you agree with the Big Data paradigm?

Big data is here to stay and it is real. It is something that will continue to grow. But when you think about managing large volumes of big data it will be is done in a distributed fashion. Some of the old approaches to data were to collect it. For many years companies would think about data warehousing, storage and they would think about collecting this data, putting it into piles and organizing it but that cannot possibly work going forward.  A number of paradigm shifts will happen. So now you have to aggregate the data and derive analytical insights from the data without moving it. In order to do that you need trusted access to these accurate resources. We need stronger identity to authenticate the identity of people and processes. As you look to aggregate data you need to do it through a very distributed network of cloud based services.

If Big Data problems and their solutions are real, in your opinion how advantageous would it be for enterprises who'd move in to address Big Data challenges early, at least from gaining competitive advantage is concerned?

To be an early mover in big data you need to be an early mover in cloud services. The forward looking enterprises understand how they can leverage cloud services to utilize their data. Big data is one of the disruptive factors that will make cloud based services more important in the future. I do not think every enterprise needs to do big data on its own. There will be vendor companies who can provide big data services. Large enterprises will get big data and they can select what they need from the suite of services. So think about the example of Twitter which is a large data source for doing social analytics. Big enterprises should be thinking about how they use social analytics to improve their business. They should look at service providers who are growing around Twitter and avail their services.

Read the full interview of CA's Peter Griffiths with CIO India here.