The Big Data Challenge

 

Why are companies such as HP, IBM and Oracle spending big money to acquire big data capabilities? Michael Vizard's Slashdot article, "The Multi-Billion-Dollar Data Management Challenge,"shows how serious the quest for Big Data supremacy has become. (Thanks to Jim Harris (@ocdqblog) for passing this along via Twitter.)

As of 2012, the world creates approximately 2.5 quintillion (2.5 x 10¹⁸) bytes of data daily (Wikipedia). The mathematical notation in parentheses is not not redundant, because the definition of "quintillion" varies according to which side of the Atlantic you are standing on. In the US and Canada, a quintillion has 18 zeroes; in the UK, France and Germany, a quintillion has 30 zeroes. That's just a simple example of the difficulty involved in dealing with Big Data.

Volume, variety, velocity and veracity are the four "Vs" of Big Data, but there's one "M" we should mention as well: metadata. Metadata is the key to managing and indexing the massive inflow of data, making accurate operational and competitive intelligence available in a timely manner to your decision makers.

For SAP BusinessObjects platform managers, now is the time to get your own metadata house in order. APOS Insight's enhanced audit and metadata management capabilities can help.

RIP Stephen R. Covey

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey told us to begin with the end in mind ("Habit 2"). The end of his life today reminds us of the formative effect he had on so many of us.

In "Habit 2", he told us to use our whole brain, and especially to find ways to tap into our right brain -- the hemisphere of passionate creativity and visualization.
Location intelligence may not have been what he had in mind as he was writing in 1989, but I'd like to think his whole-brain call to arms was prescient with regard to today's geospatial visualization trend.

Stephen R. Covey dead as a result of a bicycling accident.