by Angela Guess
A recent article notes that many data professionals are claiming that Big Data will change everything. The author, Bill Franks, asks whether this is really the case: “As with any new topic getting a lot of attention, there are all sorts of claims related to how Big Data is going to fundamentally change everything. As a person who has ‘grown up’ over the past few decades with roles both doing analytics and managing analytic projects, I don’t buy that. Certainly, Big Data is something that will play an increasing role in corporate analytics. It will provide some big benefits and lead to some terrific new analytics. But, from the view of an analyst in the trenches or analytics leader running the team, will Big Data fundamentally change what you do and why you do it?”
He continues, “Analysts have always sought out new, interesting data sources. They’ve also always pushed scalability to the limit. So, in my mind, Big Data isn’t really going to change much about what analysts are doing and why. Sure, the problems addressed will evolve due to the new data sources just as they always have. But, at the end of the day, analysts will simply be exploring new, unthinkably large data sets as they have always done. One commonly accepted aspect of Big Data is that what qualifies as Big Data will change over time. As more capacity and scale is available, what is Big Data today won’t necessarily be Big Data tomorrow. Sounds a lot like how call detail records and POS data aren’t considered all that big anymore either.”
photo credit: Khanillion
