dBig Data — Why all the Hype?

According to Gartner, Big Data is: “is high-volume, high-velocity and high-variety information assets that demand cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making”.

Which says it all really — there’s lots of it, it’s complicated, and it can help you make the right decisions provided you use the right means of analysis.

Because somewhere in your mound of data are the key facts whose interrelations can help you to build meaningful forecasts of market trends and consumer behaviours.

The problem lies in finding the right way of analysing it — while there are plenty of software packages that help you to store and centralise massive amounts of data from a vast range of sources, being able to do something useful with it is still the key challenge.

And using the wrong solution can all too easily produce the wrong results. For instance, using standard BI software is never going to be appropriate — it’s too elementary and doesn’t take into account the data’s all-important underlying properties which are crucial in the generation of forecasts.

But there is an emerging answer, which many are backing as favourite to become the go-to Big Data solution. This is Predictive Analytics, a critical combination of statistical, quantitative, IT and market expertise.

Right now, there is an early adopter advantage open to those companies that take the opportunity to gain greater insight into their Big Data assets by using Predictive Analytics.