For the last two or three years, the field of “big data” has emerged as the new frontier in the wide spectrum of IT-enabled innovations and opportunities allowed by the information revolution. The ever-increasing creation of massive amounts of data through an extensive array of several new data generating sources has prompted organizations, consultants, scientists, and academics to direct their attention to how to harness and analyze big data. Businesses are looking for a technology-based competitive advantage, while the public, academic, and scientific sectors look for opportunities to understand the world in unprecedented ways. The expectations are high that big data will propel our society into an exciting era of across the board innovations.