For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights - NYTimes.com

Excerpt from an enterprise data management reality check; the article includes an overview of some start-ups seeking to help enterprises address related challenges

"The field known as “big data” offers a contemporary case study. The catchphrase stands for the modern abundance of digital data from many sources — the web, sensors, smartphones and corporate databases — that can be mined with clever software for discoveries and insights. Its promise is smarter, data-driven decision-making in every field. That is why data scientist is the economy’s hot new job.

Yet far too much handcrafted work — what data scientists call “data wrangling,” “data munging” and “data janitor work” — is still required. Data scientists, according to interviews and expert estimates, spend from 50 percent to 80 percent of their time mired in this more mundane labor of collecting and preparing unruly digital data, before it can be explored for useful nuggets."

For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights - NYTimes.com