The promise of going down the “big data road” for the typical enterprise is that the boundary between “our data” and the world’s data gets a little blurred, and the union of the two offers new insights. It’s important to … Continue reading

In the corporate sector, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence (BI) were buzz words in the late 1990’s to early 2000. Data Warehousing was a concept that gained ground in that time. By the time social media gained ground … Continue reading

Good use of information resources starts by periodically asking “do we really need this?” The addition of “big data” to the IT pool can be countered by a thought experiment. Suppose not only that we don’t need “big data” — … Continue reading

Big data is one of those inescapable things. Even if we don’t think we need to worry about it, it’s going to be forced on us by vendors selling directly to the business. Yes, a new wave of “this is … Continue reading

How many of you know what big data is ?  I know it is a term that has “snuck up” on me, and maybe that’s true of you as well.  Possibly the problem is that not many users call me … Continue reading

If there’s one class of enterprise whose IT folk should be focused on big data pretty much as a given, it’s the public sector. Here’s why: evidence-based policy formation. We’re all aware that the public sector is facing a squeeze. … Continue reading

I have been interested in what Geoffrey Moore has to say ever since I read Crossing the Chasm. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he is making news with a whitepaper he wrote last year.  It is called “Systems … Continue reading

Sometimes the IT community (like all communities) suffers from a herd mentality. Big data may be a leading indicator of a stampede that’ll cost more than it gives. How might you think about whether or not you need to jump … Continue reading

It’s Facebook. When Social networking giant Facebook becomes a public company this Friday, May 18, IT departments should ignore the awe of its market capitalization. Departments should look at how the social networking company implemented Big Data. As defined on Wikipedia, … Continue reading

Big data is being talked about today, but few IT organizations are grappling with it, yet. Part of this is a chicken-and-egg problem: they don’t have a specific request to respond to, yet, that needs a big data infrastructure to … Continue reading

I’d like to imagine an IT future — say around 2020 or so — to close out the “bring your own device” (BYOD) posts. By then, everyone who works in a knowledge worker type of role — one that requires … Continue reading

I knew when we chose the topics for this year’s Blogging Idol competition that the burgeoning BYOD movement would be a hot-button issue. What I didn’t expect was the philosophical approach our bloggers took, and that viewed through the right … Continue reading

The IT asset pool of the typical enterprise was built up one system at a time. It’s generally application-centric, not service-centric. The infrastructure that was used to support is is likewise composed of monolithic blocks. We’ve changed mainframes for servers … Continue reading

I’ve been reading some interesting articles on Harvard Business Review about how sometimes we fail to see what is right in front of us.  This issue is one of cognitive dissonance where we fail to see the alternative uses of an item due … Continue reading