The data gold rush [Technically Speaking]

Organizations of all sizes are sitting on mountains of data; what they really need are knowledge engineers who can excavate nuggets of valuable information from that data. Earlier this year (in "The Coming Data Deluge," IEEE Spectrum, February 2011), I mentioned the concept of data mining, which uses sophisticated software and database tools to extract nonobvious patterns, correlations, and useful information from large and complex data sets.