Every business area and business line has their own value in data.

So depending on the disciplines and the work that needs to be done

with the access of so much more data that we have today, we see a big benefit

and we also see a change in the way we work.

So within Virgin Atlantic we already have a number of big data initiatives going on.

We get information from our airplanes, from our maintenance crew, from our fuel suppliers

that allows us to analyze how fuel efficient those planes are being.

And using some modern statistical techniques

we’ve been able to cut the amount of fuel that we use by a couple of percent,

which may not sound a lot but when you consider that we spend in the region of literally billions of dollars on fuel

a couple of percent makes a big difference to our bottom line.

So that’s where big data has had an immediate impact.

But we’re starting to roll out those analytical techniques into

revenue management, into customer management,

looking at all aspects of our operation to see what we can do with the information we already have

to make more effective business decisions.

So I believe the next five years will be a huge challenge for organizations to unfreeze, to become fluid again,

to rethink their structures.

I think there’s a huge opportunity there to understand how information,

how data, how actually building a data-driven organization

leveraging the power of knowledge in a network

to make a company really agile and fluid, that’s a huge opportunity as a company, as a CIO to be involved with that.

We, for example, have just taken delivery of Boeing’s new 787 aircraft.

Those planes have been built with a view to spewing out vast amounts of data.

Every single component in those planes

is attached to the airplane network and provides us with data on how it’s operating.

They are true Internet of Things objects.

A 787 on a single flight can produce upwards of a third of a terabyte of data.

And when you consider that each of those planes is doing hundreds if not thousands of flights a year

the amount of data that we have to deal with is truly massive.

But the benefit we gain from it is equally massive.

But instead of just having the data into one silo, like one area, one discipline

we are able to share the data across disciplines and we can see that the cross connection brings new benefits.

So we see, for example, data being used not just for the drillers in the drill bit,

but actually being used within the exploration and the

petroleum technology area for reservoir interpretation.

And also we see benefits where we share data between disciplines like finance and control and geologists.

What we’re starting to look at is how the Internet of Things impacts the consumer.

And you have a duality which is conflicting with each other quite a bit

because as a company I want to know everything about a consumer wherever they are.

As an individual I absolutely hate the thought

that people can look at what I’m doing, where I am and what’s happening with my data.

It is going to have an increasing impact both on consumers and on the companies that want to sell things to consumers

as to how we can find a balance between providing information to us the business

without impacting the privacy of the consumer.

If as a company you can make that exchange explicit,

if you can say I’m going to give you value in return for the information that your devices are blasting out to the world

I think there’s not going to be too many problems.

People always understand an exchange of value like that.

But it has to be explicit.

What we say is that the data owner is the asset owner. It’s very much the data is the business.

It’s important for the business and that’s where it needs to be.

So the IT role is orchestration, is ensuring that it’s accessible, it’s reliable, it can be utilized and

you can actually enhance the value of the data.

But what we do is we are very close connected to the business lines to ensure that they are the ones pulling the facts,

pulling the data and not just IT pushing it because the only way we believe we can make things change is if there is

curiosity around how you can do things differently.