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For retailers, the answers to many of their most pressing questions lie in Big Data - the volumes of structured and unstructured data generated across the gamut of customer interactions. The good news is that the answers are there.

The July 26 edition of Government Computer News includes the following article highlighting the results of Oracle Utilities' "From Overload to Impact: An Industry Scorecard on Big Data Business Challenges" report. The article notes that 93 percent of the public sector executives surveyed say they are collecting and managing more business information today than two years ago. The article also notes that the public sector organizations say they lost on average 11 percent of their annual budget, or $60.5 million, as a result of not being able to fully leverage the information they collected.

The July 15 edition of eCampus News features an article highlighting that some universities have begun to implement big data and analytics master's degree programs in partnership with vendors such as Oracle.

The July 15 edition of eCampus News features an article highlighting that some universities have begun to implement big data and analytics master's degree programs in partnership with vendors such as Oracle.

As Oracle's OpenWorld user conference closes for another year, Computer Weekly reflects on the challenge retailers face in the age of big data

Welch pointed out the importance of retail commerce to the US economy, referring to it as "a big common interest." It's also a labor-intensive one. "I'm amazed at how hard retail is," he said. Therefore, the federal government should do all it can to protect privacy and online data while still "serving entrepreneurs," he asserted.

At tech giant Oracle, Mike Webster, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Retail, says the biggest challenge facing retailers is breaking down existing siloed processes and data stores, as in information that is stored but not used day-to-day. "Customers look at online, mobile and in-store as essentially one thing - the brand they are interacting with," Webster says. "Retailers must align their business to meet this reality. Successful analytics initiatives require data from every part of the business that affects the customer experience. So it is not only online, mobile and in-store, but also supply chain and promotions."

What follows is a compendium of educated guesses and forecasts, and the editors at STORES would like to think that most of them have value. Still, if we had to sum up our expectations for 2013 in one word, it would be "convergence" - tying together the web, Big Data, analytics, mobile, social and all things digital to deliver a seamless experience to shoppers...