Is big data really living up to its hype, reports Forbes.

In a May 2011 special research report, Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, the management consulting firm McKinsey put forth the case that “Big data will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus.”

As the world grapples to understand what COVID-19 is and finding vaccines that will work, researchers have already created more than 50,000 articles that have information about the coronavirus. That is a massive amount of information that can be too overwhelming to make sense from. Some companies are now coming up with ways of enabling researchers to search through the web and process information fast for use in research.