Too Big to Ignore

Residents in Boston, Massachusetts, are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. NASA runs contests via the gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to its problems. How do these organizations and municipalities do it? Technology is certainly a big part, but in each case the answer goes deeper than that. Individuals at these organizations have realized that they don't have to be Nate Silver to reap massive benefits from analyzing today's new and emerging types of data. And each of these organizations has embraced Big Data, allowing them to make astute and otherwise impossible observations, actions, and predictions. It's time to start thinking big. In Too Big to Ignore, recognized technology expert and award-winning author Phil Simon explores an unassailably important trend: Big Data-the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever. Never before have we seen data with the volume, velocity, and variety of today. Big Data is no temporary blip of fad. In fact, it is only going to intensify in the coming years, and its ramifications for the future of business are impossible to overstate. Realizing the importance of Big Data is one thing, but how are organizations today actually harnessing its power? Too Big to Ignore answers that question in spades. Simon provides commonsense, jargon-free advice for people and organizations looking to understand and leverage Big Data. Rife with case studies, examples, analysis, and quotes from real-world Big Data practitioners, the book is required reading for chief executives, company owners, industry leaders, and business professionals.