Big data is increasingly abandoning the theoretical realm and pervading the business world in more practical ways. And with the increasing availability of data, it also becomes more important for organizations to find ways to harness that information and put it to good use. As statistician David Hand of Imperial College London says to The Huffington Post, "Nobody wants 'data.' What they want are the answers."

Health care is one of the areas that stands to benefit the most from big data, as an abundance of medical information allows researchers to identify previously undetectable trends in clinical trials. In the not-too-distant future, as the Human Genome Project advances, genetic data could lead to unprecedented insight into various diseases. Application development companies are already seeing plenty of opportunities in this area through software that monitors vital statistics and sends them to a patient's electronic health record.

As this blog reported, the business shift toward big data is already having an effect on higher education, as more students seek data training in anticipation of joining the workforce. And the trend is global: the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that there will be 1.5 million jobs for data analytics experts in the United States by 2018 and, according to HuffPost UK, the British government expects 58,000 new jobs and £216 billion (nearly $350.5 billion) in big data over the next three years.

For companies in all sectors, the need to have data-savvy employees is only going to become more pressing with time, as businesses that are quick to make the most of big data's possibilities will have a significant advantage over those that lag behind. Custom database software can help companies in their big data endeavors by presenting vital information in a clear, easily manageable format.