Posted in Big Data Startups. I really like their NewSQL entry, althought in my opinion it should also include traditional SQL with an intermediate, transparent layer where SQL is translated into something much faster for Hadoop, a bit like the new…

The link between strategy and data has never been stronger.  And the economics between the two has never been clearer; the potential return on a properly implemented big data analytics investment can be nothing short of game-changing – if it is done strategically.  It is therefore imperative to make data strategy part of corporate strategy.

The three main levers of return on investment (ROI) are cost efficiencies, productivity gains and incremental revenue generation.   These levers…

Guest blog post by David Mould, intially published in the IBM Data Magazine.

Both data warehouse managers…

With all the hype around big data analytics, not enough attention is being given to data quality or the validation of models built on the data. Despite their deterministic nature, algorithms are only as good as the data their modelers work with. 

Simply defined, algorithms follow a series of instructions to solve a problem based on the input variables in the underlying model.  From high frequency trading, credit scores and insurance rates to web search, recruiting and online dating,…

I will start this article with an analogy:

• Processing big data with small data technology is like building an 80-story skyscraper brick by brick. It will take a lot of time just to get to floor #10, and it will collapse by the time you reach floor #15.…

Data discovery’s next chapter will see an explosion in analytics globally – from tens of thousands of data analysts today to tens of millions of business users within five years.  Key drivers will be further advances in easy-to-use interfaces, the marriage of data discovery and unified information access (UIA) and greater mobile capabilities. This is in keeping with the shift in enterprise spending from legacy database architectures with rigid historical reporting to real-time, event-driven,…

GE’s entry into cloud and analytics should serve as a clarion call to organizations everywhere about not whether, but how to extract value from big data. GE will leverage industrial data to drive the three pillars of return on investment (ROI): reducing costs for itself and its customers, raising productivity of people and equipment, and generating incremental revenues. The Industrial Internet can be more significant for GE than Six Sigma was in the 1980s.

The most notable aspect of…

One of the reasons why ROI on big data is lower than it should be is data silos (or click here for another reference on data silos).…

The issue with truly big data is that you will end up with field separators that are actually data values (text data). What are the chances to find a double tab in a one GB file? Not that high. In an 100 TB file, the chance is very high. Now the question is: is it a big issue, or maybe it's fine as long as less than 0.01% of the data is impacted. In some cases, once the glitch occurs,…