Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the Opportunities

The company estimates that it could get at least a 1 percent improvement in efficiency of monitored turbines from software and network optimization, better dispatching of service, and improved gas/power system harmonization. This may not sound like much, but it would amount to $66 billion in fuel savings over the next fifteen years.

develop systematic criteria to help them decide and act when the external information is viewed as significant.

operational systems that serve as the sources for data; a data warehouse or collection of federated data marts that house and—ideally—integrate the data for a range of analysis functions; and a set of business intelligence and analytics tools that enable decisions from the use of ad hoc queries, dashboards, and data mining.

Human genome data—at about 2 terabytes per human—is rapidly becoming inexpensive enough ($1,000 per patient within a few years)

Analytics on big data have to coexist with analytics on other types of data. Hadoop clusters have to do their work alongside IBM mainframes.

We are moving beyond automating transactions to analyzing the data they generate.

so that Harris can compare visitors to sales and compute the level of conversions.

Almost every airline and hotel chain, for example, now uses pricing optimization tools to determine the best price for a seat or room.

It understood the entire marketing process, from lead generation to retention, and could offer its customers assistance in this area.