Emerging challenges in information management: A perpective from the industry

The digital ecosystem and information management are being hit by the perfect storm — the exponential growth of both structured and unstructured information, the astoundingly varied digital sources from social networks to the cars we drive, and the rising expectation and need for speedy decision making. Paradoxically, as the information grows, the ability to harness it intelligently is diminishing. It is further compounded by our difficulty in actually discovering the relevant piece of information needed to drive the decision in the context within the systemic constraints. The paper presentation will explore the challenges in the digital information management space with specific focus on analyzing, securing and harnessing the information, what needs to be done to foster the ecosystem, the challenges/gaps that exist, and the progress that is crying to be made in the coming decade. The paper will expound on the spectrum of complexities starting from the fundamental information extraction from data, and then discuss the approaches for synthesizing, standardizing and harmonizing noisy data to derive a holistic view. The paper will then elaborate ways of discovering information, and touch upon industry challenges in the space. The conclusion will highlight the emerging trends of gaining insights and intelligence, and being able to model and predict competitive behavior.