Whereas “big data” will make organizations smarter, open data will be far more consequential for increasing revenue and business value, according to Gartner Inc.

“Big data is a topic of growing interest for many business and IT leaders, and there is little doubt that it creates business value by enabling organizations to uncover previously unseen patterns and develop sharper insights about their businesses and environments,” says David Newman, research vice president at Gartner. “However, for clients seeking competitive advantage through direct interactions with customers, partners, and suppliers, open data is the solution. For example, more government agencies are now opening their data to the public web to improve transparency, and more commercial organizations are using open data to get closer to customers, share costs with partners, and generate revenue by monetizing information assets.”

 …