by Angela Guess
Jim Ericson of Information Management recently reported, “It’s gotten near impossible to avoid the elephantine words that are ‘big data.’ It has for me anyway, and you know it’s real when the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and your average high end management consultant are all comfortable flogging the term to the impatient attention of the higher ups where you work. The GOOD news about the loud hard landing of big data is that, for information managers, success favors those who are prepared at times when the future looks portentous like it does now.”
He continues, “It’s a good time to keep your head up and your ears open. The modeling and the technical side of the discussion is fascinating. There’s the attraction of falling CPU and storage costs. Opportunity beckons in all the discrete, endlessly redundant actions and transactions being collected and pulled through the Web. To trend is human, to correlate, divine.”
Ericson adds, “On the other hand, we very suddenly have an awful lot of big data experts in our midst explaining the same ‘three Vs’ under any desired motive to any boss of ours they can find. Some are real experts who have been here all along in an area like data mining or Web analytics; others are trying to reinvigorate software or consulting careers into high-concept futurist insight (futheuristics?).”
