Skip the navigation
Opinion

Coping With Infoglut

By Tommy Peterson
June 23, 2003 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The Internet has buried companies under a mudslide of unstructured data. One of the most pressing problems facing IT is how to turn all that data that won't fit into rows and columns into useful information. And while the amount of unstructured data is growing exponentially, the tools for dealing with it haven't kept pace.
The magnitude of the deluge is staggering. Approximately 85% of all digital business information exists only as unstructured data, according to research by Merrill Lynch. Most of that comes from the increasing use of the Web as an internal and external business channel.
The majority of unstructured data consists of text documents. Some of those, such as memos, letters, marketing materials and research documentation, have presented a storage and retrieval problem in business since before there was digital media. And now, in addition to those documents, there are e-mail messages, customer queries and responses from sales and support representatives generated by CRM applications, user group postings and chat messages, as well as images, movies and Web pages with their hyperlinked information.
E-mail alone has burgeoned; market research firm IDC predicts that there will be more than 60 billion messages sent annually by 2006. And besides the business imperative to take control of the organization's knowledge base, federal regulatory initiatives increase the pressure on companies to both archive e-mail and develop a way to research the content of the messages.
The other 15% of all business information -- the structured data that generally resides neatly in spreadsheets and databases -- is being sliced, diced, massaged and squeezed for every bit of business intelligence it will yield. Technologies to address unstructured data can't match the functionality of these real-time analytics for structured data, and users have been slow to adopt them. Tim Berners-Lee, the Web's primary architect, has famously observed that most of the information on the Web is designed for human consumption and resists being organized or analyzed by any automated process.
What do companies lose by not having the means to use unstructured data? Employees' time for one thing -- recent studies indicate that information workers spend as much as a quarter of their time just finding and gathering job-related information. Nuanced information about trends and customer attitudes for another.
Vendors recognize both the challenge and the opportunity presented by unstructured data. When recently asked what the next big thing in business intelligence and data warehousing would be, Don Hatcher, SAS Institute's vice president of technology strategy, answered emphatically, "Unstructured [data], without a doubt. We're



What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Don't have an account yet?
Additional Resources
Security KnowledgeVault
WHITE PAPER
Security is not an option. This KnowledgeVault Series offers professional advice how to be proactive in the fight against cybercrimes and multi-layered security threats; how to adopt a holistic approach to protecting and managing data; and how to hire a qualified security assessor. Make security your Number 1 priority.

Read now.

Cut Communications Costs Once and for All
WHITE PAPER
New IP-based communications systems are being deployed by small and midsized businesses at a rapid rate. Learn how these organizations are enabling faster responsiveness, creating better customer experiences, speeding office or mobile interactions, and dramatically reducing existing communications costs.

Read now.

BI and Analytics White Papers
Switching Schedulers - Not As Complicated As You Think
Changing or consolidating job schedulers may seem daunting. However, the benefits of switching to enterprise workload automation outweigh the risks. Read how BMC...
Capture-Enabled Business Process Management
Organizations today must deal with a vast amount of incoming information from many different sources. Efficient, automated business processes are critical to managing...
Using Case Management to Empower Employees and transform Customer Service
This Kofax paper shows how successful customer service organizations have transformed customer service by empowering their employees. We will see how Dynamic Case...
Case Study: Audi-Volkswagen Improves Procurement Control
Audi-Volkswagen required a user-friendly, easy-to-use Business Process Management system that did not require programming skills or high levels of technical expertise in-house. This...
AIIM Market Intelligence: The paper-free office, dream or reality?
In this Aiim Market Intelligence report, produced in association with Kofax, we look at the success of paper-elimination projects, where and why paper...
All BI and Analytics White Papers
BI and Analytics Webcasts
Live Webcast
How to Reduce Complexity and Automate Your Partners for Efficient E-Business:
Date: Tuesday, June 5, 2012, 2:00 PM EDT

Whether your B2B complexity is caused by multiple technologies due to M&A, business or application specific...
BMC Control-M - Single Point of Control Demo
With BMC Control-M, you schedule and manage everything - down to the very last platform and application - from one simple interface. It's...
BMC Control-M - Single Point of Control Demo
With BMC Control-M, you schedule and manage everything - down to the very last platform and application - from one simple interface. It's...
Sun Chemical Customer Success Story
Sun Chemical, the world's largest producer of printing inks and pigments, quadrupled its complex batch environment with zero extra headcount using BMC Control-M's...
Service-Enabling CICS Applications: Best Practices
This informative webcast provides an informed, thorough look into CICS service-enablement options and how they can affect your environment. You'll learn how to...
Teaching Legacy Application Elephants How to Dance
This four-minute video podcast shows how you can create services to continuously reuse enterprise applications, however and whenever needed, while leaving legacy logic...
All BI and Analytics Webcasts
Newsletter Sign-Up

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all newsletters | Privacy Policy
IT Jobs