Repost, with comments: Big Data Strategy: s+b’s Strategy of the Year

http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Big-Data-Strategy-sbs-Strategy-of-the-Year

Big data has become part of the "triliogy" of new initiatives for businesses--along with the cloud and mobile, really transforming the way companies are doing business and interacting with systems, people and equipment.

This post from Strategy & Business discusses the value & initiatives that a company should consider for using and leveraging a big data strategy.

At Wonderware, we've supported manufacturing "big data" for many years, whether it's for real-time series process analysis (Historian, Historian Client), or for manufacturing intelligence (Wonderware Intelligence) where multiple databases can be accessed, the data related in context to one another, and then presented in a graphically rich dashboard.

The point is that depending upon a user's needs, these different "industrial big data" products can help them make more sense of the data that's within their plant or enterprise--providing relationships to events, allowing for better drill down and analysis.  If you have a data historian, and aren't using one of these analytical products, you may be missing important aspects of your process that you could easily improve, or gain better insight into.