Bill Hewitt, writing for Forbes, goes over some of the big risks, and big rewards, associated with the Big Data revolution:

>Not surprisingly, the business of information management – helping organizations make sense of this ever-expanding store of data – is growing tremendously. In just the past few years, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, EMC and SAP have spent more than $20 billion buying software firms that specialize in data management and analytics. Today, that industry is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion and growing at almost 10 percent a year — roughly twice as fast as the software business as a whole.

Moreover:

>Companies that succeed in creating frameworks that cross internal functions, free of departmental silos, gain a competitive edge. When departments collaborate to create a shared vision for high quality data, the entire organization – along with their customers and shareholders – win. Sort of like Watson [on Jeopardy].

Is your business ready to benefit from Big Data and the big analytics that come with it?

[[Forbes](http://blogs.forbes.com/ciocentral/2011/05/27/big-data-big-costs-big-risks-and-big-opportunity/)]