I have to say that 6 months ago I was somewhat skeptical about big data and how it had a relevance to AIIM. After researching and writing up the recent Industry Watch big data survey (free to download here), and doing a couple of presentations, I still think it's somewhat over-hyped, but there is something emerging which could to make running a business a good deal more precise and responsive, in much the way BI did in the late nineties. And people seem really excited about the "big data meets big content" idea of linking up structured, transactional databases, and the more "fuzzy" content-based stuff.
What also comes out is that once people say "Seems like a good thing to do, what's the next step?" they realize that (a) they don't have enough in-house skills, (b) they have no idea how to connect across their different data sets and repositories, (c) this stuff can be quite pricey, and (d) their content is in such a mess that they stand little hope of extracting agregate value from it. Oh, and the content security guards get all defensive about reaching-in to all this sensitive data.
