For some enterprises, big data analytics can be intimidating, but it is a refined discipline that delivers tangible insights. A social media approach to analytics could help enterprises get more value from their big data systems. Information Week brought this news to us in their article, “Does Big Data Need A ‘LinkedIn For Analytics‘?”

Social media collaboration and crowdsourcing with regard to analytics bring more people together to work on the solution. When a company grows and is forced to manage faster and faster data streams, the traditional ways don’t always work. When the wisdom of the crowd is utilized, the potential is magnified and multiplied.

Natural language processing can help. Business users can ask the right questions and get results in terms familiar to their business, terms that can be read and understood or interacted with. The first release of Watson Analytics will include a “freemium” version of its cloud-based service designed to run on desktop and mobile devices.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.