Guest post by Michael Ryan.
There is much feverish online discussion about “big data,” particularly in relation to whether smaller firms that aren’t already accustomed to the use of advanced analytics should embrace it for their operations. Unsurprisingly, more than a few myths have arisen as a result.
Here are just seven of the many misconceptions to have sprung up around big data in the last few years.
1. Big data is a short-lived fad.
This has already been shown to be untrue—according to Datafloq, the term ‘big data’ itself was coined by O’Reilly Media in 2005, while the use of data to track and control businesses can be traced back 7,000 years. For at least a decade, what we now know as big data has been heavily commercialised, with many public companies having built multi-billion dollar valuations through their use of it.
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