1. ROI for business intelligence projects is over 10,000%Nucleus Research examined several case studies to find out how much companies were getting back from their investment in business intelligence.

Of China’s major cities, Beijing’s pollution problem is probably the worst, causing thousands of premature deaths every year.

Australian cloud point of sales company Kounta recently launched Kounta Insights, an analytics platform that dives deep into point of sale data for a particular store or outlet. Information is power, and what better way to amass it than from sales data of the many products you push out?

Nowadays, it’s hard to find an organization that isn’t using big data in some form or another. But while some organizations are capable of leveraging big data at the highest level of advanced analytics, others are struggling to evolve their big data initiatives into something more useful and competitive than basic reporting and proofs-of-concepts (POCs).

What is Big Data?

Big data is a very large collection of structured and unstructured data that is stored and accessed very quickly to facilitate analysis and understanding of business issues. From relational data typically stored in databases to textual data and log files stored in newer structures like columnar data bases, big data includes every bit of information captured by an enterprise.

When enterprises interested in leveraging big data and analytics ask how to get started, they often are advised to begin with Hadoop, Apache Software’s open source data storage and processing framework.

With the current focus on acquiring data scientists to lead business analytics programs across all industries, midsize businesses are having difficulty competing against larger organizations with deeper pockets in the limited talent pool. As Fredric Paul notes on NetworkWorld, anyone with "data science" in their job title and a few years of experience is getting 100 recruiter emails per day. With both more money and perhaps more interesting problems to tackle, top data talent is regularly poached by top firms.

Modern companies operate in a highly connected world with disruptive trends and technologies. The rise of MOBILEhttp://cdncache1-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png, lean startups and social networks puts consumers in control while forcing organizations to be more human-like, more sustainable and more open.