Big Data is just database people trying to sell more software – Ayasdi Co-Founder and CEO Gurjeet Singh (Feb, 2014)

Over the last couple of months I have had the opportunity to speak with a number of researchers, technologists, customers and developers in and around the area of large scale data based inference. There is work progressing at a frenetic pace and technical accomplishments that are indeed marvelous(Watson, Spark, etc.). However, we are still reaching for a coherent way to think about this apparently powerful but unfamiliar tool.

I am yet unclear as to whether the monolith from Kubrick’s mind-bender would be us or “Big Data”. Figuring out a language to get the two sides to communicate is challenging, of that I am clear.

McKinsey had some advice from last year that probably had many left scratching their heads. We definitely need more work on this one.

The answer, simply put, is to develop a plan. Literally. It may sound obvious, but in our experience, the missing step for most companies is spending the time required to create a simple plan for how data, analytics, frontline tools, and people come together to create business value.