Nowadays data is the lifeblood of business activity, the key to identify strategic solutions and beat the competition. But achieving success requires the ability to quickly extract the proper data, using the appropriate tools: whatever is your goal, business processes management, product life cycle management, production system improvement or energy efficiency in buildings, it is the ability to correctly interpret and exploit data that enables scenarios simulation and provides valuable information to set up a production or a strategy.
Softeco is ready to face challenges and opportunities offered by Big Data and Big Data Analytics, and, through the Research & Innovation division, is constantly working to improve and extend its technological expertise to provide customers with more efficient products and services.
Big Data Analytics: the evolution of business intelligence
Huge volumes of data, heterogeneous in terms of source and format, which can be analyzed in real time: all this falls under the definition of Big Data. The data flows generated in the last decades have produced information storages concerning every activity, both human and non-human; precious but often overlooked, undervalued and misunderstood, these data sources represent a very high value potential that, to be usefully deployed, must be translated into knowledge.
To exploit this extraordinary potential, it is necessary to strengthen the interpretation process of these large data volumes, to identify and trace significant information that can be used to create new automatisms and produce benefits in multiple fields. The current innovation process consists precisely in the development of dedicated products that, through latest-generation technological solutions, can recognize relevant data, transform, link and enrich them to serve specific needs. This process of collecting and analyzing large volumes of data, whose ultimate goal is to extract hidden business information, is named Big Data Analytics.
Data visualization
In a world where images are increasingly protagonists, data can be regarded as boring, impersonal and difficult to understand, especially large volumes of data. To make their reading easier and more enjoyable, it comes in help Data Visualization, which is the graphic representation of data of any size and type. Taking advantage of the synthesis and communication capabilities of images, Data Visualization allows identifying at a glance phenomenon and trends that are invisible at a simpler reading, and it is becoming indispensable for simplifying and making easily understandable complex contents. After all, according to the Gestalt theory, the “the whole form is different from the sum of its parts”, that is: our perception does not depend on the single elements, but on their structuring in an organized whole.
Data Visualization represents the heart of Big Data Analytics: it is the tool to transform a large amount of complex data into understandable, content-rich and captivating representations. Data visualization, as a form of visual communication, has become a real language: the language of images.
Data visualization & Big Data Analytics for Energy Efficiency
Within the participation in the PickUP research project (“Piattaforma di integrazione sensori Iot per Controllo Kpi energetici in ambito Urbano per la Pianificazione interventi”), the Research & Innovation division is applying these technologies for the realization of Energy Efficiency dashboards, using and renewing the corporate experience in this sector, where Softeco is present with a rich portfolio of products and solutions. The Data Visualization tools, integrated with Big Data Analytics systems, enable the creation of intelligent dashboards for the analysis of energy data. Starting from environmental data and energy consumption data of a set of buildings, the dashboards provide information in real time, allowing in-depth analysis through the exploration of historical data, the study of correlations, comparisons with forecast data and baselines, allowing the user to evaluate trends and interpret them according to their competences. Through these dashboards for energy monitoring and energy analysis, users can quickly react to changes in context, can identify strategies to reduce costs and are supported in the diagnosis of failure or performance degradation.
