William Shakespeare wrote that “What’s past is prologue.” Big data surely builds on our rich past of using data to understand our world, our customers, and ourselves. Now the world is flush and getting flusher in big data from cloud, mobile, and the Internet of things. What does it mean for enterprises? In a word: opportunity. Firms have taken to big data. Here are my four predictions for key enterprise big data themes in 2013:

1. Firms will realize that “big data” means all of their data. Big data is the frontier of a firm’s ability to store, process, and access (SPA) all of the data it needs to operate effectively, make decisions, reduce risks, and create better customer experiences. The key word in the definition of big data is frontier. Many think that big data is only about data stored in Hadoop. Not true. Big data is not defined by how it is stored. It can and will continue to reside in all kinds of data architectures, including enterprise data warehouses, application databases, file systems, cloud storage, Hadoop, and others. By the way, some predict the end of the data warehouse — but that’s nonsense. If anything, all forms of data technology will evolve and be necessary to handle the frontier of big data. In 2013, all data is big data.