Data at Work

Last week, Google announced that Google Trends moved to real-time. From here on, journalists and analysts can get a “faster, deeper and more comprehensive view of our world” in real-time. Culled from 100 billion monthly searches, minute-by-minute data will be made available in no less than 28 countries worldwide. By doing so, Google signifies a coming-of-age not only for news outlets, but also for corporations gathering massive amounts of intelligence worldwide. I have no doubt more organizations will follow Google’s lead.

For many companies going down the big data path, collecting data for its own sake has been a costly exercise with varying degrees of ROI.

With the exponential growth of IoT and M2M, data is seeping out of every nook and cranny of our corporate and personal lives. However, harnessing data and turning it into a valuable asset is still in its infancy stage of development.  In a recent study, IDC estimates that only 5% of data created is actually analyzed. Thankfully, this is set to change as companies now have found lucrative revenue streams by converting their data into products.