Book excerpt: Information Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage with Data is about making smart decisions to make the most of company information. Expert author William McKnight develops the value proposition for information in the enterprise and succinctly outlines the numerous forms of data storage. Information Management will enlighten you, challenge your preconceived notions, and help activate information in the enterprise. Get the big picture on managing data so that your team can make smart decisions by understanding how everything from workload allocation to data stores fits together. The practical, hands-on guidance in this book includes: - Part 1: The importance of information management and analytics to business, and how data warehouses are used - Part 2: The technologies and data that advance an organization, and extend data warehouses and related functionality - Part 3: Big Data and NoSQL, and how technologies like Hadoop enable management of new forms of data - Part 4: Pulls it all together, while addressing topics of agile development, modern business intelligence, and organizational change management Read the book cover-to-cover, or keep it within reach for a quick and useful resource. Either way, this book will enable you to master all of the possibilities for data or the broadest view across the enterprise. - Balances business and technology, with non-product-specific technical detail - Shows how to leverage data to deliver ROI for a business - Engaging and approachable, with practical advice on the pros and cons of each domain, so that you learn how information fits together into a complete architecture - Provides a path for the data warehouse professional into the new normal of heterogeneity, including NoSQL solutions