The Data Vault: Top six data articles, 17-24 August

Norm Katz is Head of Sales, Marketing, & Business Development at Composite Apps, a professional service organization dedicated to improving enterprise operations through the consumerization of enterprise software and BI platforms. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that the guys at Antivia have written extensively on BI user adoption and why organizations need to focus on increasing this if they're to make the most of their BI investment.

Print this page Email article The term 'big data' has become ubiquitous as it has permeated nearly every industry over the last ten years. While definitions abound, its fundamental implications remain constant: it represents a cross-functional focus on leveraging exponentially growing volumes of data to increase operational performance and ROI.

In 2013, scientists in the UK published results showing that DNA could be used to archive vast amounts of data. One gram of DNA can hold the equivalent of two petabytes of data it was claimed. In the report published in Nature.com they encoded a clip of Martin Luther King's classic address from 1963, a JPEG photo, [...]

Utilizing big data analytics to personalize the customer experience will be crucial for telcos to manage customer churn and improve loyalty, says Ovum. It takes on average, at least 3.5 years for telcos to break even on SAC (subscriber acquisition cost), however the average customer lifetime for telcos is currently only 2 years.

Applicants for this year's freshman class at Ithaca College didn't have to send their standardized test scores. If they did, the scores were considered, but so were some surprising other factors - how many friends and photos they had on social media, for instance.

(Image) With big data now being used in so many different industries, it should probably come as no surprise to hear commercial airlines have been adopting big data analytics to improve their own businesses. Big data can be a highly versatile tool, something that helps companies be more responsive to change and become more prepared for the future.