”Data is the new oil” is a well-known term today used to emphasize on the fact that data and your ability to exploit data can make you rich.
The rise of big data has put some more fire to this burning issue indeed with the variant saying “Big data is the new oil”.
Now, as oil is many things, data is many things too. As few of us actually use crude oil, also called petroleum, few of us don’t use raw data to get rich. We use information distilled from raw data for specific purposes. One example is examined in the post Mashing Up Big Reference Data and Internal Master Data.
This brings me to that we have the question of quality of oil just as we have the question of the quality of data as explained nicely by Ken O’Connor in the post Data is the new oil – what grade is yours?
Liliendahl on Data Quality 