I’m increasingly convinced that we’re entering into a new phase of computing: one where competitive advantage is going to be gained or lost based on the quality of your data and your ability to analyze it. (Well, maybe not you personally... ‘you’ in a generic sense.)

This trend will accelerate the adoption of HPC-like infrastructures and workloads into the general business market. This means that your typical corporate IT shop will be asked to do more, and do it faster, than ever before. It also will bring some interesting opportunities to folks who currently toil in the HPC trenches, as the corporate types look to ramp up their companies’ analytic horsepower.

With this in mind, here’s an interesting page from Deloitte (“Business Analytics: Just Another Passing Fad?”) that looks at the pros and cons of the trend. As consultants who have a burgeoning practice in this area, it’s safe to assume that they’re in favor of it – but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t correct. They are. For further reading, I’d also take a look at another link on that page, “Clearing the Confusion: The what and why of business analytics”, for a bit of a primer on this stuff and why it’s important.