While Big Data continues to grab headlines, most information managers know there are many more "small" data sets that are becoming more valuable for gaining insights. That's partly because business users are getting savvier at mixing and matching all kinds of data, big and small. One key success factor is the ability create compelling visualizations that clearly show patterns in the data.
Register for this episode of The Briefing Room to hear Analyst Lyndsay Wise share insights about best practices for designing data visualization mashups.   

When companies predict the future effectively, they almost always win. But barriers abound for corporate departments and mid-sized organizations that have limited capital, IT staff, or both. That situation is now changing, thanks to several market forces, such as software innovation, maturing methodologies, as well as competition from open-source offerings. Check out this episode of The Briefing Room to hear veteran Analyst Dr. Robin Bloor, who will explain why predictive analytics is finally going mainstream, and what that means for companies looking to grow.   

Data is going up and data is going down. Its endless upward spiral to the cloud is being lauded as the platform and paradigm that we must now adhere to for future IT efficiency.  At the same time, data is going down. It is being processed and (crucially here) it is being 'analysed' at an in-memory level, where new speed efficiencies outstrip the power of disk-based alternative options.   

Addressing big data challenges is becoming commonplace within organizations. Technologies such as Hadoop and MapReduce are available to deal with distributed and highly complex data sets. Analytics takes this form of data management one step further to identify valuable information and help organizations identify potential opportunities and challenges. Companies use these resources to address business issues that are based on information flow across multiple sources that include internal, external, unstructured and structured data sources.