“Data is not smart in its own right; rather, it’s only smart if it drives smart decisions,” says James Kobielus, of IBM. He delivered this prophetic wisdom in the keynote address at the DATAVERSITY® Smart Data Online 2016 Conference recently. DATAVERSITY brought this news to our attention in their article, “Big Data and Smart Data: Big Drivers for Smart Decision Making.”

Kobielus went on to say that smart data is a strategy that sets the groundwork for smart decisions, rather than a particular type of data. To be considered smart data, your data should enable insights that are trusted, contextual, relevant, cognitive, and predictive. Combining the attributes of big data with those of smart data can actually help you utilize the power of your data, which can drive decisions more effectively.

Don’t forget that smart data is consumable, and that is a good thing. Data is useless if it can’t be consumed by target users, be they human beings or automated components.

Melody K. Smith

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