When it comes to Big Data, Jean-Luc Chatelain is a name worth dropping. Jean-Luc Chatelain is the CTO, Datadirect Networks and former VP & CTO Information Optimization at HP. To say he knows his way around Big Data is putting it lightly. Last week, Chatelain tweeted his six #BigData predictions for 2014, and he didn’t hold any punches. Lets dive into each of his six predictions.

My 2014 Predictions in an all in one format pic.twitter.com/3HWW3ecFNY

— Jean-Luc Chatelain (@InformationCTO) December 14, 2013

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2014 Prediction #1: Most enterprises will keep drowning in data and have no information or insights.

Big Data and the Big Data Economy have done a lot of things, including an increase on available data by an order of magnitude three- to four-times over.  But there’s been a lag in enterprise adoption, despite Big Data being an anticipated priority long before it hit any organizations’ pipelines.

What needs to happen next is an improvement in understanding how Big Data fits into the pipeline, and how the enterprise will collect, process and predict based on its amassing data.  More importantly, how will the enterprise glean this elusive insight Chatelain speaks of, and how will they take action accordingly?

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2014 prediction #2: Some Enterprises will want to “do #BigData projects” while their #LittleData issues are still not solved.

We’ll call this jumping the shark. Often times technology professionals, more than other profession, are susceptible to ‘shiny-object-syndrome’. If you are an Enterprise company, and you don’t currently have your ducks-in-a-row on the #LittleData stuff, jumping into #BigData is only going to cause more problems for the problems you have and aren’t addressing. A key takeaway for Enterprise professionals: gain an above-average working understanding of your data.

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2014 prediction #3: Software defined everything hype will increase in total ignorance of where and when HW & SW tight coupling makes sense.

2014 prediction #3: Software defined everything hype will increase in total ignorance of where and when HW & SW tight coupling makes sense — Jean-Luc Chatelain (@InformationCTO) December 12, 2013

Software might be eating the world, but taking your cues from venture capitalists who have skin in the game, or start-ups who are trying to get to those VCs, is not a good strategy. Hardware is not going to go away next year, or anytime in the near future for that matter. Yes, the IT world has changed its relationship status with hardware to ‘its complicated’, but time and time again we are being reminded of the current weaknesses in corporate strategies when it comes to the old HW and SW conundrum.

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2014 prediction #4: Commodity & open source everything pundits will still live in blissful ignorance of a little thing called TCO.

Ouch. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or system. Cost drives adoption, one way or another. Profit is in the passenger seat.

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2014 prediction #5: EDW economics will still be poor, drive ETL for data reduction & inflexible model fit hence derive faulty insights.

Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) is not to a level of good economic value, according to Chatelain. EDW consolidates data from multiple sources in support of enterprise-wide decision making and related information needs such as reporting, analysis and planning. If he is right, the data analyzed by Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) systems will produce data that is not void of errors.

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2014 prediction #6: The #BigData universe will still have a giant black hole into which #security, #privacy & #GRC have fallen & will stay.

2014 prediction #6: The #bigdata universe will still have a giant black hole into which #security, #privacy & #GRC have fallen & will stay

— Jean-Luc Chatelain (@InformationCTO) December 12, 2013

Security. Privacy. Governance, Risk Management and Compliance. The bigger the data, the bigger the security risks. The bigger the data, the bigger the end-user worries of privacy. And does anyone actually think that we are in a place with Big Data where governance, risk management, and compliance are leading the way? Of all Chatelain’s predictions, this is the biggest (pun intended). NSA anyone?

Despite its ongoing maturity, Big Data isn’t all bad. In fact, the takeaway is that Big Data is still expected to improve our lives in ways we never imagined. But to summarize Chatelain in one sentence: we aren’t there yet.