Authoritative to Actionable

**** Looking BACK to 2013 ****

It's Magic Bullet time!  If you remember on thing that I write this year, let it be this: 

Business Runs on Columns

Columns equal refinement.
    Columns equal clarity.
        Columns equal understanding.

Our love for reports, data cubes and particularly spreadsheets is a reflection of this business reality.

A primary goal for anyone doing big data analysis: Transform some of your conclusions into tables and columns. Such data more reusable. It is also very convincing.

The challenge: Big Data doesn't seem to fit nicely into columns. In fact, most unstructured data seems to be the polar opposite.

Over the next few weeks, I'll discuss methods to help you effectively promote your brilliant conclusions using good old fashioned columns!

Just remember: Columns show you understand your data.

Big Data is so Last Year

**** Looking BACK to 2013 ****

Let's all agree: Last year's Big Data is this year's Better Understood Data.

Volume, velocity, variety and veracity (value) are as important as ever.  The tools and needed to handle these types of data will simply become more mainstream.  But how much has really changed?

Let me illustrate by comparing traditional Business Analytics with the new world of Big Data:

Traditional Approach	New Big Data Approach!
SQL Query	SQL Query
Tables	Tables
Columns	Columns
Rows	Rows
Filters	Filters
Calculations	Calculations
Search	Search
Load	Load
Transform	Transform

I present this somewhat whimsical comparison to make a point: Big Data does not have to change our fundamental organization of data. We can leverage existing principles to work with data as we always have. The devil is in the details.

There are more than 50 Big Data management products on the market today. We can expect that number to at least double in 2013. Each vendor offers different setup, query and storage methods resulting in yet more implementations options. Given the choices, which schema, query and storage strategy will win?

I predict the Big Data market will eventually coalesce around a relative few schemas and processing architectures.  NoSQL and Hadoop (both batch and real-time) will remain. But the safest prediction I can make is: SQL Query, Tables, Columns, Rows, Filters, Calculations, Search, Load and Transform will remain in the Business Analyst's Big Data toolkit.

I know my focus for 2013 too:  Help clients and colleagues become comfortable with Big Data knowing that their current skills and methodologies will serve them well as they strive to understand their data better than ever before.