Information overload: An explosion of ignorance
Companies are storing more data than ever; the compound annual rate of growth of enterprise storage capacity is 60%. Data pours in from enterprise applications, streaming video content, and electronic communications. The much-touted 'Internet of things' - i.e. the instrumentation/measurement and tracking of everything connected to the network will generate trillions of bytes of additional data every day. Business intelligence tools and techniques have not kept pace with the growth of information available. How will organisations that already struggle to handle current volumes of data cope? Will they end up in the paradoxical situation of storing nearly everything but knowing almost nothing?Where are the tools to help organisations cope with the data deluge? How will they be able to track and access information not held on centralised systems (estimates for the amount of critical data sitting on distributed systems and laptops range up to 40% of all corporate data)? Will we be able to integrate data sources more simply without requiring ever more middleware? And in addition to achieving the legal governance required by modern accounting and auditing rules, can we really unlock the potential productivity and advantage of actually knowing what we know?
