The forces of this perfect storm – maturing users, new technologies, decreasing cost barriers, and abundant data – are causing companies to reassess their approaches to analytics. The smarter firms have been finding new ways to drive revenue and serve customers. Now that we understand the why and how of this new approach to data and analytics, we need to take a step back and consider the various challenges therein.

As the data that companies use becomes increasingly diverse and more widely distributed, executives must manage and control that new environment with respect to security, service level agreements (SLAs), global and regional laws concerning data and analytics, and compliance and regulatory issues. In addition, firms will also face challenges managing a distributed and increasingly complex analytic environment. Early on, most companies were leveraging only a handful of algorithms to drive their business. Now, it’s common for them...