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The Deadly Cost Of Ignoring Big Data: $71.2 Million Per Year. Originally published on The Innovation Advantage on blogs.oracle.com. If your company’s reluctant to tackle the Big Data challenge because you think it’ll be too expensive or disruptive, you might want to consider the alternative: companies without aggressive plans for managing and exploiting the explosion in data report they are losing an average of $71.2 million per year. That’s not a cumulative total; rather, that’s $71.2 million from each company. Every year. If that annual revenue loss makes your stomach feel like you just drank a molten-lead soda, I’ve got some good news and some bad news to share from a new Oracle study of 333 C-level executives across 11 industries. First, some of the bad news: Asked to grade themselves on their ability to cope with and take advantage of the data deluge within their industry, 40% of respondents in healthcare gave themselves a D or F; in utilities, 39%; airlines, 31%; retail, 30%; and financial services, 25%.

Second, some of the good news: Can Real-Time Data Give Your Site an Edge? Local Governments: Ready for Big Data? Got big data? Crunch it with Google’s BigQuery. Google wants to help you crunch big data like cornflakes. To that end, it is opening up BigQuery, the service is designed for large-scale internal data analytics, to companies of all sizes, and it’s adding a web interface so you can do it all in the cloud. Until now, BigQuery has been in a limited preview for a small number of developers. Now, Google is allowing a slew of interested companies into the BigQuery fold. The service, which is still in a beta of sorts, will be free to users for the time being, and customers will have a 30-day notice before it switches to a pay-to-play model. Interested parties can sign up now for access to the service. “Rapidly crunching terabytes of big data can lead to better business decisions, but this has traditionally required tremendous IT investments,” wrote Google product manager Ju-Kay Kwek on the company blog.

Here’s an overview of the product from the Google I/O 2010 demo of BigQuery: IBM's Anjul Bhambhri: Letting Silos Be Silos. The business of information technology has made verbs of many nouns, not the least of which is "siloing. " On the one hand, workers in an enterprise tend to operate against their own interest when they continue to do their business from disparate silos. On the other, corporations that actively try to strike down their silo walls often find themselves dealing with information chaos.

Many vendors have characterized the emerging field of Big Data as a revolution, a collapse of the Berlin Wall-like structures that collect businesspeople into separate enclaves. You might be surprised that IBM isn't one of them. Okay, so silos are bad, says IBM's vice president for big data, Anjul Bhambhri, in part 2 of our ReadWriteWeb interview. Scott Fulton, ReadWriteWeb: As you probably know on a deeper level than I, the reason for database siloing dates way, way back to the 1970s and '80s when computing products were purchased on a department-by-department basis. We can't ask people to change all that. Market Research Startup EyeTrackShop Raises $3M. EyeTrackShop, a startup that develops eye-tracking technology for measuring ad effectiveness, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from Northzone.

The company says its technology works through a regular webcam, allowing market researchers to gather data quickly and affordably. You can run the test before you spend money on a campaign, or test how well the advertising works once it’s live, and how it performed in different formats and sites. Customers include big tech companies such as Google, AOL, and Microsoft, as well as P&G and JCDeacaux.

One of the other features touted on the EyeTrackShop site is the ability to test advertising in multiple countries simultaneously. The company says it will use the new money on international expansion, and on product development, too. EyeTrackShop spun out of eye-tracking company Tobii Technologies in 2010. Stop Flying Blind: Use Big Data to Benchmark Your Startup. Most startups fail. Nine out of 10 never amount to anything more than fond memories and a forgotten Facebook page.

One reason is that they often lack a clear picture of exactly how they’re doing until it’s too late. But there are tools designed to help you assess your startup's progress compared to similar companies. The best way for startup founders to improve their chance of success is by learning to make better decisions. But if you want to make better decisions, you need better data.

And that’s where Startup Compass comes in: It’s designed to help you benchmark your startup’s performance against thousands of others to identify what you’re doing right and what you need to improve. Startup Compass collects data from tens of thousands of startups around the world. Big Data for Small Companies “This is a big-data approach to startup success,” says Startup Compass co-founder and serial entrepreneur Bjoern Lasse Herrmann. “Startups can learn three key things,” Herrmann says. The 5 don'ts 1. Big Data Is An Issue Of Corporate Survival. How Intuit Uses Big Data For The Little Guy. 9 more companies putting a cloud spin on big data — Cloud Computing News. IBM VP Anjul Bhambhri: Must Big Data Alter the Enterprise? There's a public relations brochure template someplace that reads, "________ is changing the way the world does business. " If this were a Mad-Lib, you could insert the proper noun of your choice. Historically, evolutionary changes in both business and the economy that supports it, have mandated the need for subsequent changes in technology.

There are certain very notable exceptions (thank you, Tim Cook), but let's be honest and admit that databases didn't spring up from gardens like daisies and change the landscape of business from winter into spring. There was a need for relational databases that went far beyond keeping up with the competition.

So when companies say that big data will change the way you work... really? Scott Fulton, ReadWriteWeb As you probably know on a deeper level than I, the reason for database siloing dates way, way back to the 1970s and '80s when computing products were purchased on a department-by-department basis. Making data bigger and more consumable. Dell Joins Microsoft, Yahoo for Riverside Data-Center Party | Wired Enterprise. Dell has joined the data center party in Quincy, Washington. Quincy is home to data centers run by Microsoft, Yahoo, and Intuit, and this week, Dell announced that it too has opened a facility in the tiny town on the Columbia river.

Dams along the Columbia river, you see, provide relatively inexpensive hydropower for these massive computing facilities. But perhaps more importantly, the state of Washington has provided tax breaks for tech giants building data centers in the region. Dell sells computers and servers and networking gear, but in recent years, it has evolved into something more. It’s a services company that helps set up, run and even host infrastructure for the world’s businesses, and it’s a cloud computing company that offers access to virtual computing resources over the net. The Dell Western Technology Center in Quincy is one of a handful of data centers Dell is planning to build around the world to jump into the market. IBM's Anjul Bhambhri: Letting Silos Be Silos. Cracking the Krakow Code – Poland’s newest high tech cluster emerges [TCTV] I recently had the pleasure of visiting a European city which is to a great extent a true example of how technology is changing society and business across Europe today.

Once, Krakow was a city infamous for its nearness to Auschwitz and a terrifying example of how the Nazis could destroy a previously peaceful society where people of many creeds had lived together in peace. Under the Soviet occupation, it was just another grey Polish city. But since liberation in the later 1980s and the emergence of a strong Polish market economy in the 1990s/2000s, Krakow is taking its place in the technology world, along with the major hub of Warsaw, as a crucible of technology innovation.

I flew to Krakow to join the burgeoning startup group there known as Hive which showcased pitches from local startups aiming to go global. While there I shot the ‘mini documentary’ below which gives you a flavour of some of the early startup companies in Poland. 7 steps for business success with big data — Cloud Computing News. 5 low-profile startups that could change the face of big data — Cloud Computing News.