But this industry of analytics has been around for decades. Why do we all of a sudden have this breakout role on the continual rise? Is it just another name for a similar role in the past?My friend Michael, an actuary in Australia, had a few thoughts on this:⁃ A lot of industries that did not have data in the past now have a lot of data, thanks to Internet-of-Things and other technologies prevalent in other industries (eg manufacturing)⁃ Significant reductions in cost of (cloud) computing⁃ The internet industry⁃ A lot of click data, web data, as well as foot-fall data in stores and streets have been generated. Lots of physical datapoints that previously were not able to be tracked can now be tracked⁃ Compare this to another industry that was always rife with data - financial services (e.g. stock markets). They always had data, so models had always been built for themMy additional thoughts:⁃ The past few decades, companies have been on a continuous journey to ‘digitize’ their business. That is, bring the analog to the digital. Now, we’re seeing the fruits of those efforts. The next wave of continuous transformation for companies will be to create value out of that data.