This document discusses the challenges of big data and different approaches to structuring data systems. It notes that most enterprise databases are still relatively small, less than 1TB, but that 80% of business information is now unstructured. Big data represents a new class of economic asset. The document examines different approaches taken by companies like Google and eBay and questions whether one is clearly better. It argues that being able to model data is a more significant challenge than raw data size. Making data globally accessible within an organization in a unified way could help make the organization smarter by improving insights.