Welcome to the World of Big Data

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

Just Google the term “Big Data” and you get more than 24 million hits (and 125 million on Bing!). Yikes, that’s big. Maybe you have heard about the “Big Data” craze or maybe not. Either way, the rush is on... and like Cloud Computing, it’s gaining momentum fast. So what is all the fuss about? What exactly is Big Data and why should we care?

According to Wikipedia, “Big Data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications.” According to IBM, “Big Data is any type of data--structured and unstructured data such as text, sensor data, audio, video, click streams, log files and more.”

So far, the definitions don’t suggest a value proposition--but rather very complicated ventures into new tools and technologies that allow for the collection of data without any specific goal in mind. It’s all in hopes of finding some sort of insight that may not have been possible without intense data mining, disparate correlation analysis and more.

According to the BMO Capital Markets report, over $50 billion is being spent by marketers on Big Data and Advanced Analytics in hopes of improving marketing’s impact on the business. ($50 billion is big.)

Hmm, maybe some success stories …

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