Big Data in Practice

A Big Deal

Today enormous data generation combined with powerful analytics, algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as cheap data storage, make this the era of big data. Big data may not last – at least, not as a business term. Given the inconceivable amounts of data that nearly every organization, across all industries, produces every day, the emphasis will move to “smart data.” Companies that use data selectively, analyze them wisely and apply them to improve their decision making, will gain a competitive advantage over those that don’t.

Big data affects almost every industry and every job. Almost everything you do at work and much of what you do at home – web surfing, social media activity, watching TV, playing online games, and sending emails and texts – now produces data that multiple organizations collect, analyze and act on for their profit. More industrial, office-based and household devices – an estimated “50 billion by 2020” – connect to the Internet, creating the pervasive Internet of Things (IoT). Every organization, regardless of size or industry, must embrace big data and analytics to compete and thrive. Now, every business...