Last year we did hit approximately 1 zettabyte (one trillion gigabyte) of data in the public web and the speed by which new data is created continues to accelerate, including unstructured data in the form of text, semi-structured data from M2M communication and structured data in transactional business applications.

FORBES: Turning Data Into Business Value

Semi-structured and unstructured data being generated in vast quantities at network speed are rich sources of information that tell organizations exactly what customers need and want and how or why they buy.

FORBES: The Big Cost Of Big Data