CIOs can build big data awareness

IDG News Service recently offered tips on how to cope with the coming of big data. As with any radical new IT trend, big data may require a change of perspective from its users. The advantages it can confer, however, are vast.

The news provider sought to remind IT executives that unstructured data sources are everywhere. Log files that are produced automatically from hardware could be leveraged for big data analytics, as could information from sensors. This is particularly true in the utilities sector. The source envisioned a future where everything from cars to vending machines sends usable information.

IDG also reported that every type of company will have to think about big data and develop a strategy accordingly. Simply because big data sounds like something that large companies would have, some smaller organizations may overlook the fact that it can be created, automatically or through monitoring of users, by a company of any size.

Consumer Goods Technology reported that one excellent source of big data is downstream information from trading partners. In retail especially, companies' webs of connections can provide millions of data points that simply call for an analytics program to put them to use.