What are some of the trends creating opportunities for Big Data enriched analytics?

As I seek to understand Big Data and what it means to me as an IT practitioner, and to my clients as a consultant, I have found it useful to identify some of the trends that have underpin this opportunity

1. The number of RFID tags used in supply chain, tracking conference attendees, tracking luggage at airports, monitoring temperature of food, structures etc has increased from about 1.3 billion in 2005 to over 30 billion by end of 2011. Prices are predicted to drop below 1US cent making it possible to instrument event more systems.
2. A flight from London to New York generates about 650 TB of data which could be proactively analyzed to gain new insights that could lead to improvements in safety and other efficiencies.
3. Capturing every user's online clickstream would generate TBs of data that can be used to analyze and optimize the shopping experience. 
4. Data generated from smart meters can be used to better understand customer behavour, align supply better to demand, and enable customers to make more informed decisions about their energy usage patterns.
5. Take Facebook. The ability to analyze the whole data population, taking into account intents and sentiments can offer tremendous value. Doing this is not without its challenges. Facebook for example, experiences over 2.5 billion likes and more than 300 million photo uploads each day.
6. ..and Twitter. Twitter's 140 character or less design allows users to provide precise commentaries on a variety of subjects. The value to be derived from analyzing this data for sentiments and intents is significant.
7. What about location based services (LBS)? Apparently, the average commuter in London has their photo taken about 150 times as they travel to work. Most of the mobile devices we carry with us have LBS enabled. This information can be used to further personalize interactions. 

So, there is a lot of data being generated, and this will increase over time. Most of the data is not analyzed at all. Imagine being able to not only analyze data at rest, but also data in motion, as it hits the enterprise. He in lies the tremendous opportunities of Big Data Analytics. The PureData System from IBM simplified today's data requirements and enables clients to develop capabilities that enable them to gain insights that create a competitive advantage.