8 TECH OUTLOOKNovember 2015Highly complex modern IT organizations across all industries have been tasked with the challenge of not only keeping up with the rapid pace of technology, but also deploying it throughout their companies in an efficient and secure manner. In doing so, the "I" in "IT" sometimes gets overlooked or at the very least ,it can take a back seat. But not for much longer. With the acceleration of big data analytics, I believe information, and therefore IT, are set to experience a major renaissance. The trick is making sure we go about it in the right way.The merging of Health and Data ScienceWhen I began my role as Chief Information Officer at Merck, health data was expanding at breakneck speeds with the proliferation of electronic medical records, the growing ubiquity of biosensors, and the affordability of genome sequencing. Data scientists could detect depression based on an individual's changes in movement and phone call patterns. They could predict illness the day before onset due to mobile devices sensing less physical movement of their owners. I was witnessing data-savvy companies from outside the healthcare industry catching onto this huge data goldmine quickly.At Merck, we had just successfully implemented critical global information systems; however, we still had work to do to further exploit that data for business gains. In my mind, it was time for us to think about ourselves as a data-driven company and become an analytics powerhouse. After all, the lives of our current and future patients could benefit greatly from it.Whose Job is it Anyway?But there remained many unresolved questions. Whose job is it to bring all of the internal and external data together at scale? Who will be the chief advocate for big data analytics across a multi-layered enterprise? And who will hire, develop, and inspire the teams to create the advanced tools and algorithms that could unlock the power of data? For me, it was a no-brainer. There is no better function for the job than IT. Why? First, IT is one of the few functions in an organization that truly has the end-to-end visibility across the enterprise. That visibility allows us to not only reach By Clark Golestani, EVP and CIO, MerckGet Ready for an IT Renaissance­Brought to You by Big Data AnalyticsClark GolestaniIN MY OPINION
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