While high-level stories about using tech to solve real problems are interesting, I find this kind of article frustrating.
It attempts to cover so many different aspects of the "big data" world in one breath that it only helps confuse casual onlookers about what different processes, technologies and skills are at work.
The good news is that any time you see tech sector coverage like this, there's a potential opportunity to pitch a follow-on article that can serve as a disambiguation for the first one. Lots of managers and executives that read Business Week would kill for a layman's breakdown of the divisions and cross-overs between Hadoop, BI, "the cloud" and data viz (just to start).
I mostly agree. However, most non-technical managers have NO clue what's going on and don't even have a framework for attempting to understand it. To them it's all "magic." I expect to see a lot of snake oil coming out in the next couple of years.
It attempts to cover so many different aspects of the "big data" world in one breath that it only helps confuse casual onlookers about what different processes, technologies and skills are at work.
The good news is that any time you see tech sector coverage like this, there's a potential opportunity to pitch a follow-on article that can serve as a disambiguation for the first one. Lots of managers and executives that read Business Week would kill for a layman's breakdown of the divisions and cross-overs between Hadoop, BI, "the cloud" and data viz (just to start).