Loraine Lawson

Four Steps to a Big Data Strategy Someone once told me she didn’t believe in Gartner’s hype cycle. I found this really strange, because in my many years of covering technology, you could set your watch by the inevitability of its curve. To me, the hype cycle seems pretty straightforward. Something new is created. The […]

Four Steps to a Big Data Strategy In recent years, more IT organizations have shifted away from hand-coding integration to using a data integration tool. In theory, that should eliminate some of the spaghetti code going forward. The problem, though, is that times have changed and the data integration tools of yesterday may no longer […]

Four Best Practices for Accelerating Time-to-Value of Master Data Management Friday, I wrote about pursuing a data strategy that lets you play the short game while focusing on winning the long game. I used Google’s recent re-entry into health care data as an example. Well. I wish I’d read this piece by Jim Harris before […]

Tracing the Evolution of Business Intelligence Through the Rise of Embedded Analytics Forbes published an interesting opinion about the costs of investing in health care data, and I think it makes some worthwhile points that relate to other industries and possibly all data-related projections. We talk a lot about achieving ROI and the business case […]

Five Ways to Know if Your Challenge Is Big Data or Lots of Data When it comes to physics, CERN may be at the top of the food chain. But when it comes to managing Big Data, it’s trying to become more like Google, CERN Infrastructure manger Tim Bell said at Structure: Europe. “We conceded […]

Tracing the Evolution of Business Intelligence Through the Rise of Embedded Analytics Drop everything else you’re doing! Finally, someone is putting Big Data to work on one of the world’s greatest mysteries, at least since 1958. I’m talking, of course, about Bigfoot—AKA, Sasquatch, Yahoo, Skookum, or the Stink Ape. If you follow me on Twitter, […]

Four Steps to a Big Data Strategy Combining operational data from other sources — particularly Big Data sets — is generating a lot of discussion as a “next step” for companies investing in Big Data. So it’s not surprising that Pentaho’s release of its new Business Analytics 5.0 platform is generating some buzz. Pentaho calls […]

Four Ways Security Analytics Can Improve Business Performance Cloudera, which offers a distribution of Hadoop, announced this week a search for data stored in Hadoop Distributed File System and Apache HBase. The company says it’s the “industry’s first fully integrated search engine for interactive exploration” of data in these systems. The search engine allows you […]

Here’s a question: Why is data science such a big deal these days? Big Data, obviously, but it’s not just that, contends veteran IT analyst Robin Bloor. In a follow up to his rant about the term “data scientist,” Bloor actually promotes the importance of data science as a practice, if not the terminology. He […]

Big Data Security Risk in the Enterprise: The Pitfalls of Hadoop It’s been two years since IBM’s supercomputer Watson beat Jeopardy’s two best champions. We’ve long known that IBM intended to repurpose Watson for the business world, but it turns out, IBM’s baby has done a lot of growing up in those two years, as […]

Nearly 55 percent of Big Data projects aren’t completed, according to a survey of IT professionals conducted by Big Data solution provider InfoChimps. By comparison, “only” 25 percent of IT projects aren’t completed overall, InfoChimps found. So what’s going on with Big Data that more than half of all projects aren’t completed? It’s inaccurate scope, […]

Overstepping the Line Between Big Data and Big Brother? I’m sure you’ve heard about Big Data’s potential to revolutionize business, including the assertion that it will give you more insight into customer behavior. Statistically, that may be true, but a recent CNN Money article challenges the idea that Big Data will allow organizations to “know […]