Companies could create new, revenue-generating services from the "data streams" they produce, but it requires a data-savvy culture and new skills, according to research supported by the Society for Information Management's Advanced Practices Council.

Companies that resist building an analytics culture will fall further behind as big data becomes more ubiquitous and continues to grow exponentially.

Big-data analytics is a huge area for drug distributor McKesson Corp., says Kathy McElligott, the company's chief information officer.

If the company is the bus and its leader is the driver, as Jim Collins' famous analogy states, then it stands to reason that when the bus is moving, the driver should mostly be looking out the windshield (toward the future) rather than consulting the rear-view mirror.

Most organizations today have access to more than enough data to help improve their operations – the challenge is sifting through and analyzing all that data to find hidden insights so they can make better decisions about the future.

RadioShack has struck a deal with a coalition of 38 state attorneys general to destroy most of the company's consumer data, stipulating that no credit or debit card account numbers, social security numbers, dates of birth or even phone numbers would be transferred.

The IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark showed us that consumers are flocking to their computers and mobile devices to buy, browse and research. This all sounds great but, here is the challenge - at the same time their attention spans are at an all-time low. So, what does this mean for marketers and retailers?

IBM says it will invest $3bn over the next four years to establish a new Internet of Things (IoT) unit, and that it is building a cloud-based open platform designed to help clients and ecosystem partners build IoT systems.