BIG data is suddenly everywhere. Everyone seems to be collecting it, analyzing it, making money from it and celebrating (or fearing) its powers. Whether we’re talking about analyzing zillions of Google search queries to predict flu outbreaks, or zillions of phone records to detect signs of terrorist activity, or zillions of airline stats to find the best time to buy plane tickets, big data is on the case.

Today, the Croatian government is already using an IBM IT infrastructure to provide e-government services to Croats in minutes and hours, rather than the days it traditionally required. The latest government project saw the Croatian national population registry being integrated into the system along with the information systems of the ministry of finance and ministry of public administration, to name just a few.

In response to Ruben Gansen

We live in the age of data, where everything that surrounds us is linked to a data source and everything in our lives is captured digitally. The physical world around us has turned into raw information: internet, video, call data records, customer transactions, healthcare records, news, literature, scientific publications, economic data, weather data, geo-spatial data, stock market data, city and government records.

We call it big data—and it is indeed getting bigger, growing exponentially with each passing day. Luckily, the opportunities to take this data and marry it with analytics to improve all aspects of our lives are also growing exponentially.

We live in the age of data, where everything that surrounds us is linked to a data source and everything in our lives is captured digitally. The physical world around us has turned into raw information: internet, video, call data records, customer transactions, healthcare records, news, literature, scientific publications, economic data, weather data, geo-spatial data, stock market data, city and government records.

Thanks to Big Data, every Web ad you will soon see on Facebook and across the Web will have been bid upon in real time by advertisers who will pay based upon your perceived value as a potential customer.