Right now Big Data is the trend and the promise, but the reality is that it is very hard to squeeze value of it. Based on current information, we are still in the very learning curve and not all experiments have held their promises in this area.
It seems that it really takes a lot of data to produce something really useful, and even with vast amounts of data, it is difficult to make sense and produce applications that can really be of predictive use. Compared to the predictions just a few years ago, the real breakthrough does not seem to have really happened.
It is therefore still very difficult to value the actual troves of Big Data. Their value should ultimately be derived from their usefulness and the applications they allow. At the same time there is a (low) cost associated to maintaining all this data and there might be a point where decision-makers might have to balance this cost with the value it provides in the short term.
I would be interested to have hints about how to value data from the readers of the blog to see how this area progresses.
