Big Data Meets the Real World

by Ken Orr

There are a lot of things in the IT world that don't make sense right off the bat. One of them is the role of data in the world of management and analysis. Since the beginning of the computer revolution, managers and technology people have vastly underestimated the role that good data plays in decision making. Over the years, more and more sophisticated tools for manipulating larger and larger mounds of data -- 4GLs, multidimensional databases, management dashboards, and so on -- have promised to revolutionize management, only to come up short in practice.