In 2018 there were numerous Big Data predictions from industry leaders. For instance, there will be a high demand for data scientists. Big Data will become more accessible. Information retrieval and NLP will see a surge in use. Now that we are in Q4 of 2019, did those and other predictions live up to the hype or go beyond industry expectations?

Data isn’t solely used by data scientists and analysts anymore.  Data is a currency that’s being monetized by marketers, recruiters, and sales managers to influence decision makers and stakeholders. One research organization understands this all too well. The need to analyze and interpret big data is now bleeding into the medical research field in hopes to drive results that will eventually lead to a cure for childhood cancers.

New Frontier Data, the leader in marijuana- based market research just expanded their presence in the cannabis community by acquiring not one but two different marijuana centered organizations. The DC-based company announced last week that they had acquired Zefyr – a data discovery platform for approximately $10 million. The merger creates what the companies call the “first marketing tech solution of its kind” in the industry.

Many positive things have been said about big data. The increasing adoption of big data among organizations has however shown the downsides of this concept and technologies associated with it. Legal confidentiality is one of the areas that is under threat from big data. In the rush to embrace big data and opportunities that come along with it, we must never forget where we have come from. For instance, back in the early days of the dotcom boom, many internet businesses failed to address the most basic of things. For example, many forgot to secure their assets by following the correct legal procedures and intellectual property rights. As such, many lost their innovations.