Not long ago, most data was generated by systems and stored in databases as structured data. That data had steady, predictable growth and the only people interested in that data were IT and financial staff, who had the skills to work directly with the databases. Today, however, most content is created outside of databases and in a wide variety of formats. Some are structured but many are unstructured — documents, photos, videos. Add social and sensor data, and the growth rate becomes exponential.