From Big Data to Small & Wide Data

#1

Gartner Says 70% of Organizations Will Shift Their Focus From Big to Small and Wide Data By 2025

It says that disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic are causing historic data to quickly become obsolete which is breaking many product AI & ML models. It goes on to add that decision making at the moment is overly reliant on data-hungry deep learning approaches.

The small data approach is about the application of analytical techniques that require less data but still offer useful insights.

The wide data approach, on the other hand, enables the analysis and synergy of a variety of small and large, unstructured and structured data sources.

The new analytics techniques of small & wide data, says Gartner, will allow more robust analytics, either by reducing the required volume or by extracting more value from unstructured, diverse data sources.

What’s your opinion on this emerging analytics trend of 2021?

Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-05-19-gartner-says-70-percent-of-organizations-will-shift-their-focus-from-big-to-small-and-wide-data-by-2025

#2

Small and wide definitely helps our business. As a contract-driven organization, historical data doesn’t necessarily predict future data. While it is still important, we are much better equipped to look at recent history and plug in known future variables to predict future performance (and to impact it!)

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#3

Interesting piece! From my experience (working majority with clients in the insurance industry), generally speaking both “Wide” and “Big” data are more relevant then ever before.
Wide in the sense that we see more and more 3rd party data becoming relevant, for instance weather/climate data, sensor data from buildings/ships etc.
Big because still this industry is dependent on historical data to predict the future and controlling risk.
So the “small” data trend is maybe not so relevant in this area, but we do see an increase in more narrowed analytical applications which may rely less on decades of data.
But I can’t see the broad analysis requiring 100+ variables and years of data going away anytime soon

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#4

I’m going to echo Rachel on that. Maybe it’s just my bias because our organization is working more toward predictive analytics, but I feel like more people are trying to see down the road. I feel like with Covid people want to be able to prepare and know what’s coming personally and that’s translating to their professional work more

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