Colin White

Big Data, big hype, big danger

April 12, 2013 by Ted Cuzzillo

A remarkable thing happened in Big Data last week. One of Big Data’s best friends poked fun at one of its icons: the Three V’s.

The well-networked and alert observer Shawn Rogers, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates, tweeted his eight V’s: “…Vast, Volumes of Vigorously, Verified, Vexingly Variable Verbose yet Valuable Visualized high Velocity Data.”

He was quick to explain to me that this is no comment on Gartner analyst Doug Laney’s three-V definition. Shawn’s just tired of people getting stuck on V’s.

How strange to be stuck on a definition, but we get stuck all the time trying to define Big Data. Other terms are easier. We’ve always known what visualization is. We seem to agree on “self service BI.” We also know what relational databases are, what ETL is, and all kinds of other established technology. We don’t agree on “business intelligence” or “decision support,” but somehow we don’t dwell on it. We don’t even quibble too heartily with “easy to use,” even though I could argue that we should.

Data surfing with big data

August 16, 2012 by Ted Cuzzillo

The usual big-data story leaves out crucial bits. We hear about the “what” — big, huge data of all kinds. We hear about the “when” — now and coming soon. We hear about the “how” — Hadoop with helpers. But we almost never hear about the “who” and the “why.” Who’s bothering to analyze all this data, and why?

Let’s call the whole thing DI

February 26, 2009 by Ted Cuzzillo

You say dayta and I say dahta. You say business intelligence—and now Colin White and Claudia Imhoff say “decision intelligence.” They may want you to say it, too, depending on what you mean.

Now or later—yesterday afternoon it didn’t sound clear just when—they’d like you to say “decision framework.” Perhaps that’s in addition to “decision intelligence” or instead of it. I’m not sure.

They’re both veterans of technology wars, fads, shifts, realignments and convergences. Both are among the most eminent of BI thought leaders. They’ve given their suggestion a lot of thought.

You may ask why? For one thing, they explain, business intelligence has become too closely associated with analytics and data warehousing. They decided it would be easier to offer a new term than try to straighten out the old one. What will keep the same thing from happening to the new term? A fair question.

A second reason for the new term: they’d like to get your attention.

They hope to have the attention of several hundred attendees tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. at TDWI World Conference in Las Vegas. They’ll explain in detail during their keynote. The hot breakfast, restored by popular demand since last August, won’t hurt.