The Economist issued a special report last week entitled “Data, Data Everywhere.” In this report, Kenneth Cukier, a financial and business correspondent in Japan, was interviewed to share his thoughts around how the superabundant growth of information is having a macro-economic effect not only on businesses but even society as a whole. Some have labeled this the age of “Big Data.”
Kenneth explains the Big Data movement through a business example. He reports that “Wal-Mart handles more than 1m customer transactions every hour, feeding databases estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes.” The CIO of Wal-Mart, Rollin Ford, wakes up everyday asking himself “how can I flow data better, manage data better, analyze data better?” Wal-Mart is not alone in asking how they can prepare for the age of Big Data.
