Tag Archives: big data analytics
Is The Data Explosion Impacting You? How Do You Compare To Your Peers?
The digitization of everything is creating a data explosion near you. Whether data is accumulating in the data center, in the cloud, on your laptop or mobile device, sometimes too much of something isn’t always a good thing. In a recent webinar cohosted by Informatica and Symantec, we polled our listeners to find out how the data explosion was impacting them. We also asked what type of unstructured and structured data is growing the fastest. Check out what they said. (more…)
The Rising Need for Data Integration Around Predictive Analytics
There was an interesting story that surfaced recently. Indiana University researchers found that a pair of predictive modeling techniques can make significantly better decisions about patients’ treatments than can doctors acting alone. Indeed, they claim a better than 50 percent reduction in costs and more than 40 percent better patient outcomes. (See a story by Derrick Harris over at GigaOM for additional analysis, and I will also cover this subject in greater detail in a forthcoming column in TDWI’s “BI This Week.”) (more…)
Enabling Big Data to Live Up to Its Big Promises
Many organizations are rushing into big data efforts before it’s clear what business benefits will come from this new paradigm. And this is creating problems for big data analytics proponents. “At one very large financial services firm, we’ve heard that the next executive that uses the word ‘big data’ without a very precise explanation of how it will be used for the organization will be fired,” says Randy Bean, co founder of NewVantage Partners, quoted in MIT Sloan Management Review.
“The point is that there’s been so much overuse and misuse of the term that organizations need and want to understand precisely how big data capabilities and big data initiatives will help them,” he explains. (more…)
It’s Not Yet Clear Who is Leading the Big Data Charge
Make no mistake about it, executives are hungry for Big Data and the insights new forms of machine-generated and user-generated data can offer. However, Big Data analytics skills are hard to find, and even when they are available, hard to finance. As a result, the handling of Big Data analysis is defaulting to business users.
That’s one of the conclusions of a recent survey of 241 executives from across the globe, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The survey confirms that data democracy is a positive force – the vast majority of respondents, 77%, favor enabling more of their employees with better access to Big Data and the ability to analyze it in the context of other relevant data. There may be inertia at the top, but a grassroots movement within organizations is forcing the revolution into a reality. (more…)
Data Mining and Analytics in the Presidential Race – Sinister or Just Sensible?
A lot of media reports have been surfacing lately about “secretive” data mining activities taking place within the presidential campaign. Many articles paint the efforts with a sinister caste, implying that underhanded invasions of privacy are taking place.
But to any seasoned data professional, data mining is a discovery tool that pulls nuggets of insight out of mountains of data. For any business that wants to get ahead in today’s hyper-competitive global economy, advanced data mining and analysis is not a luxury, it is a necessity. As USA Today’s Jack Gillum describes the Romney campaign’s data analytics: (more…)
A Return to Big Data
Quite a bit has happened on the topic of big data since my last post on Informatica Perspectives almost one and a half years ago. I have spent a career working with organizations on how to get control over their uncontrolled data growth and industry visionaries are promoting this brave new world of big data. (more…)