It used to be that it only made sense for the real big guys to employ big data.  They have lots to move in only a short time to do it, and all of the emerging technologies are making it easier and less expensive to do so. 

But what about other businesses that aren’t huge multi-national corporations?  Your local firms, software companies, or credit unions don’t need them...do they?  The short answer, they do. 

The long answer...

Even the smaller guys have teras and teras of data to sift through.  They too need to do everything they can do, as quickly as possible, in order to maximize their business dollars.  The smaller the business, the more each dollar counts.  By taking a cue from bigger companies, small and medium businesses can squeeze more out of their data to make decisions that are critical to their survival. 

Maybe it’s the internet startup that needs to measure the result of the social marketing campaigns they’re running since they started using Hootsuite. 

Or perhaps your local SAAS company wants to track their progress with only their customers in the HR industry by measuring the usage stats of the products they use. 

How about the new online verification company that has to measure the results of the millions of impressions they’re following monthly?

The smart money says that since they need to run these reports in the first place, they probably are watching their dollars.  Hosting the data centers on-site would be too much of an expense to companies of this size, considering the energy bills and paying the IT guy to maintain everything. 

In a case like this, it makes sense for them to use the new technologies at hand to stretch their dollars and avoid wasteful practices. 

It’s also a matter of competition, and there’s two ways of viewing it.  First, you always want to maintain an edge on the competition.  Obviously, the more advantages you have the better your chances of "winning".  Conversely, if you don’t utilize all the tools available to you, you will get passed by. 

Don’t get passed by. 

Related reading: Processing Unstructured Data