Monday, December 26, 2011

Everything Is Making Data

Engineering faces a future of ever-increasing digital connectivity - - data from cellphones, computers, sensors, digital cameras, RFID readers, smart meters, and GPS devices.  Not just ant hills of data - - but mountains of data from all over the planet.  You, your car, your house - - we live in a world of data generation.  We make data and it gets connected to someone or something in real time.  Engineering needs to thing of  individuals as personal data factories - - factories rich in economic outputs. 

Our era of "Everything Is Making Data" fits nicely into the evolution of data.  The evolution of data consists of three stages - -
  1. Descriptive - - What just happened?
  2. Predictive - - What might happen?
  3. Prescriptive - - What should happen?
Engineering ought to be going nuts over the opportunities embedded in exponential data generation growth combined with new tools for sorting - - new ways to analyze data in real time.  Look for companies like Splunk to make the tools that address the needs of the big data movement (this marketing slogan - - "Listen to your data" gets at the heart of the issue.

The McKinsey Global Institute has estimated global data generation to increase by 40% per year - - data generation as a grow industry.

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