LET’S
I
NOtSCREW
THIS UP
Michael Whitehead | CEO, WhereScape
F YOU’RE AT ALL familiar with whom I am and what I do, you’d probably identify me as a big data skeptic. In the present instance, however, I’ve come to praise big data.
Big data matters because it has cachet. Just about everybody – from the person in the street to the C-level executive on high – has heard of it. The executives are alert to DM and to DM-related issues in ways they haven’t been for almost two decades. They’re interested in what’s going on. The practical effect of this is that IT and DM are relevant again.
I see this as a critical second chance. Fifteen years ago, we in DM botched the decision support revolution. In an atmosphere of excitement, optimism, and critical C-level buy-in, we set the bar too high, neglected to manage expectations, and categorically failed to follow through. We delivered inflexible data warehouse systems. We developed unusable business intelligence (BI) tools. We forced organizations to change their business processes to suit our own product agendas. And in the nascent Age of Big Data, we’re gearing up to do it all over again.
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