The IT world has been an amazing boon to business, supplying companies with streams of data and information to assess the marketplace, make strategic decisions and informed judgments. But do we have too much data, and do we know what to do with it all?

The Economist reports that by one estimate, we created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, we will create 1,200 exabytes.

"Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analyzing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still," the magazine notes.

Yet it points out that the deluge of data is transforming business, government, science and everyday life. And the data can be used for good and perhaps for purposes that are less than pure. 

At the moment, credit card companies have mastered the ability to gather and make good use of the data in their possession. Retailers, supermarkets, drug makers and other businesses use data mining quite effectively to determine buying patterns and trends, and to target their marketing. But as the Economist notes, law enforcement and intelligence agencies are not linked together as they should be. The same can be said for the emerging electronic health records industry that still has a long way go.

And then there are the risks--data stolen and computers hacked. Rather than owning and controlling their data, people and companies very often find that they have lost control of it or do not know how to use it effectively.

The key, says the magazine, is "learning to cope with the data deluge, and working out how best to tap it."

For more:
- see this Economist article

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