Operational

Analytics
Introduction
In the current world, data is the asset of enterprises as they are used to generate
knowledge and build decisions. It is termed as the raw material of 21st century.
Data available in various forms is spawned by machines that are armed with
electronic gadgets like motion sensors, cameras, microphones, GPS (Global
Positioning System) and accelerometers, ATM (Automated Teller Machine)
transactions, mobile phones, credit cards, and other electronic gadgets. Data is
also produced by social network sources like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, emails
collections, web consumer clickstreams, mobile barcode readers, Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) sensors, and countless other sources.
In today's fast moving, highly interconnected global business environment,
enterprises are relying on complex systems built out of interconnected electronic
sensors and gadgets built around Industrial Internet nicknamed as Industry 4.0
standard for their daily operations. These systems also called as Cyber-Physical
Systems (CPS) are producing data with high volume, velocity, and variety for
facing the competition.
Generated data streams are varied and carry a lot of systems and business
information that are critical for business success. High speed data in motion
holds the key to valuable insights. Gaining visibility into this stream and the
critical enterprise operations that they support can mean the difference between
success and failure. To achieve a complete view of operational performance for
enabling the rapid remediation of breakdowns, savvy enterprises are investing
heavily in analytics capabilities. Since the insights are time sensitive, the
business units have to act on those insights immediately.

Industry 4.0 Standard

The interconnected complex IT systems have become the prime movers of
industrial production systems playing on economics around the world. Systems
are built around machines, storage systems, and supplies that adhere to a
defined standard and are linked up as cyber-physical systems (CPS). With
industrial internet, also known as Industry 4.0, the systems have started to
revolutionize the operating methods. The systems are responsible for digitization
of inter and intra, horizontal and vertical value chains, and are directly
responsible for the product and service portfolio delivery of enterprises. This new

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 generation breed of systems has given us the ability to control granular data
streams thereby opening up new world of possibilities leading to better insights.

Data Streams
Streaming data is different from other kinds of data due to varying operational
attributes which are attached to them. It is often loosely structured compared to
other datasets. For example, the amount of email data streams being generated
in an organizational context is quite high and fluctuates over time frame. The use
of biometric devices across an organization convey a lot of insight on the
organizational affinity and mobility.
Data switching traffic sensors convey a lot of insight on the network traffic. The
data is always available and new data is always being generated. Downtime for
the primary collection system means that data is permanently lost. Insights are
generated with a suitable mix of data streams and hence complexity is quite high.
Future plants and systems will have clearly defined data connector interfaces for
excellent data visibility. Emerging data churning technologies have the capability
to flexibly replace machines along the value chain. Industry 4.0 emphasizes the
idea of consistent digitization and linking of all productive units in an economy.
Information
on Event Processing, an emerging technology that helps to achieve actionable,
situational knowledge from large scale event streams in real-time, is an
interesting area for novel applications. Having carried out extensive research in
the space of data streams, HTC's Research and Development team has
generated white papers for the understanding of users at large. Refer the - Event
Processing Systems the Way to Improved and Quicker Decision- Making white
paper.

Big Data Age

The physical and digital worlds are meeting at a very high speed. Most of the
physical process are getting instrumented with sensors, telematics, and devices
that drive ever-growing data. The major challenge that the modern world faces is
the flooding digital data. Collecting, storing, and analyzing data from industrial
sensors, network logs, and other machinery connected to the Industry 4.0 has

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 become more feasible because of the emergence of big data technologies.
The leading open-source software framework available for scalable, reliable, and
distributed computing is Hadoop. It is changing not just the technology but also
the economics of data storage and data warehousing. With solutions like Hadoop
Distributed File System (HDFS), Hive, HBase, Pig, Oozie, Zoo-keeper, Flume,
etc., Hadoop has become the low cost industry standard ecosystem for securely
analyzing high volume data from a variety of enterprise sources. A simple
overview of the ecosystem is shared here:

Analytics
Arriving at a decision or gathering information for decision-making is not a simple
and direct task. To derive information or gain knowledge with analysis, a suitable
combination of aggregated data streams as raw material and analytic tools are
required.
Generally, analytics refers to analysis of data using Pareto analysis, trending,
seasonality, regression, correlation, control charts, and other statistical
techniques. It is not always a row of numbers noted from a gauge. Today, it is a
combination of data streams that adds value to the organization. When analytics
is integrated into business and decision-making processes the insight flows
automatically to thousands of knowledge workers, and thousands of decisions
made each day by people or computers.

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 Big data analysis requires interconnected set of solutions from acquiring the data
to making decisions for repeated analysis. Organization's early use of analytics
focused on developing data dashboards that depict information in graphical form.
This approach makes it easy for executives to detect trends and take action, and
it was an important step in turning information into insights more quickly.
According to Wikipedia, “analytics is the process of developing optimal or
realistic decision recommendations based on insights derived through the
application of statistical models and analysis, against existing and/or simulated
future data”. When analytics is applied for the day-to-day operations, one gets
into operational analytics.
The operational transactions have decisions with it and each action is driven by
a decision. The goal of any analytic solution is to provide the organization with
actionable insights for smarter decisions and better business outcomes. Different
types of analytics, however, provide different types of insights. Analytics
solutions are of three principal types:
• Descriptive - uses business intelligence and data mining for analyzing: “What
has happened?”
• Predictive - uses statistical models and forecasts for analyzing: “What could
happen?”
• Prescriptive - uses optimization and simulation for analyzing: “What should we
do?”

Operational Analytics
Big data and predictive analytics are used by business and industries to change
and improve the processes and operations majorly.
Industry 4.0 interconnects the various production level sensors in the value
chain. Operational analytics enable the businesses to analyze and mine stream
the machine generated sensor data and / or production data to provide real-time
insight into enterprise operations. Data streaming enables real-time analysis to
take place. Instead of querying static data, real-time data streams are
continuously evaluated by static questions. When data is analyzed in real-time it
produces numerous benefits and the details are discussed in the Managing
Realtime Data Streaming Effectively with CEP Solutions white paper.

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 Operational Analytics automates analytics for helping end users (or systems)
during the decision-making process itself, leading to Operational Intelligence.
Decisions, whether tactical or strategic, are critical to the success of every
organization says Davenport, in his recent paper, How Organizations Make
Better Decisions, (Jan 2010).
The basis of operational analytics built over Industry 4.0 standard is the
increased availability, and integrated use of relevant data by connecting all
products, resources, and enterprises involved in the value chain. It includes the
ability to generate additional value from available data and for maximizing
customer benefits. This requires a fundamental transformation of processes, the
product, and service portfolio as well as the existing business models.
The granular level visibility into systems and devices with analytics and insights
help enterprises to increase their operational efficiencies and reduce costs.

IT Operations Analytics
IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) is also known as Advanced Operational Analytics
or IT Data Analytics. It encapsulates technologies that are primarily used to
discover complex patterns in high volumes of 'noisy' IT system availability and
performance data.
There are varieties of analytic dashboards:
• Operational Dashboards: Helps the front-line workers and supervisors to track
the core operational processes
• Tactical Dashboards: Enables managers / analysts to track / analyze
departmental activities, processes, and projects.
• Strategic Dashboards: Allows executives and staffs to track the progress in
attaining their strategic goals
Operations Dashboard is a multilayered application built on business intelligence
and data integration infrastructure, enabling enterprises to measure, monitor,
and manage business performance more effectively. They focus on monitoring
functions more than analysis or management functions. Tactical Dashboards
emphasize analytical functionality more than monitoring or management
features. Analytical functionality enables users to investigate the root causes of
problems, issues, or trends. Strategic Dashboards emphasize management

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 features more than monitoring or analytical functionality.
Operational Analytics applies to organizations of all sizes across industries along
the entire length of supply chain. Understanding customers' behavior, enhancing
their experience and profitability is equally important regardless of the customer
base size. In Operational Analytics, numerous combination of transactional data,
such as product aggregations or aggregations of customers who are
geographically close may be performed. Descriptive models are used to
determine demand forecast, manufacturing and distribution costs and cost
relationships, future raw material costs and availabilities, and a variety of other
parameters and relationships required by the Operational decision database.

IT Operations Analytics Cont.

HTC supported a renowned data storage company for designing their
operational dashboard to monitor the production system. Production level details
were scattered across the spectrum. Such details were identified and cataloged.
Based on the organizational needs, suitable metrics were identified and mapped
to the organizational goals with relevant risk measures. As planned, information
from multiple systems were extracted for further analysis. The identified matrices
were mapped to the operations dashboard. Suitable triggers were planned and
run for the benefit of end users leading to good visibility.

Conclusion
Operational Analytics uses big data technologies for the latest applications to
analyze machine data and gain insight, which gives better business results. The
data generated by machines collected by the IT systems contain valuable
insights. IT Operational Analytics automates the process of collecting and
organizing data for locating patterns that help in identifying business results and
improving system performance. In the current market, there are several software
solutions for operational analytics that help in easily transforming the
disconnected data (that reside in disparate systems) to actionable information.

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Acronyms
The acronyms used in this white paper and their expansion is provided below:

Acronym Expansion
ATM Automated Teller Machine
CPS Cyber Physical Systems
GPS Global Positioning System
HDFS Hadoop Distributed file system
ITOA IT Operations Analytics
RFID Radio Frequency Identification

References :
[1] Operational Analytics – Cloudera:
https://www.cloudera.com/content/dam/cloudera/Resources/PDF/whitepaper/
WP-Operational-Analytics-101.pdf

[2] Ten IT-enabled business trends for the decade ahead:

http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/ten-it-enabledbusiness
-trends-for-the-decade-ahead

[3] Think Act:

https://www.rolandberger.com/media/pdf/Roland_Berger_TAB_Industry_4_0_201
40403.pdf

[4] Descriptive, Predictive, and Prescriptive Analytics Explained - The two-minute

guide to understanding and selecting the right analytics:
https://halobi.com/2014/10/descriptive-predictive-and-prescriptive-analyticsexplai
ned/

[5] Using Performance Analytics Dashboard:

http://wiki.servicenow.com/index.php?title=Using_Performance_Analytics_Das
hboards#gsc.tab=0

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