Companies must be fluid, flexible and ready to move to different solutions to stay ahead

There has been apprehension about big data and its benefits, but it is too early to express such sentiments.

There is no doubt that big data analysis can yield huge benefits. But, as with most worthwhile pursuits, it is something that will happen over time.

Over the past three years, I have spent a lot of time developing business intelligence and analytics solutions that have helped companies save on time and costs, including substantially improving the time it takes to get goods to market.

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In my experience, companies need to take four important steps to unlock value from big data implementations and steer clear of the "trough of disillusionment".

The first and foremost steps are to "think even bigger". Companies must think of a larger, more comprehensive business model and figure out ways to populate it with multiple data sources. Doing so will help them build a much bigger picture.

At the same time, the companies must also envisage the kind of infrastructure needed to support data at that scale and consider ways to multiply the data by a factor of 10 or more within the same parameters.

This is precisely what Oregon Health and Science University in the US is doing on its big data project of speeding up the analysis of human genomic profiles. The project is expected to help create personalized treatments for cancer and support many other scientific breakthroughs.

Calculating about a terabyte of data per patient, multiplied by potentially millions, OHSU and its technology partners are developing infrastructure to handle the massive amount of data involved in sequencing an individual human genome and noting changes over time.

With breakthroughs in big data processing, the cost for such sequencing could come down to as low as $1,000 per person for this now elite research, which means demand will skyrocket and so will the data.

The second important aspect that companies should consider is to find the relevant data for their business.

It is also important to learn from other business leaders about the challenges they have encountered and how they have worked to boost the effect on business.

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