It’s official: Big Data is the flavor of the month. Everyone’s talking about it and everyone claims they can do it. Whatever “it” is. Is it just hype? Or does it really represent a “big” opportunity?  The first step in answering these questions is to settle on a definition of ‘Big Data’ and understand what’s really changed.

According to McKinsey Global Institute, “Big Data refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage and analyze.” IT guru, Buck Woody, says, “Big data is the data that you aren’t able to process and use quickly enough with the technology you have now.” But Big Data is more than “lots of data.” It goes beyond quantity and speaks to the challenges of velocity and diversity. In today’s age of digital media and channels, vast amounts and types of data are coming at us so fast and from every online and offline direction. Big Data refers to the ability (or inability) to effectively deal with all these aspects of consumer information.

Big Data isn’t really a new concept, but a new label. About 10 years ago, Gartner talked about the knowledge gap, which is the simple idea that the amount of data we are creating is outpacing our ability to analyze and consume that data. So again, what’s really different?

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