The phrase unstructured data usually refers to information that doesn’t
reside in a traditional row-column database this includes things like e-mail
messages, word processing documents, videos, photos, audio files, presentations,
webpages and many other kinds of business documents.
Internally, almost every corporate department uses unstructured data in
some form; externally, unstructured data is used to monitor and report on
movements of shipments and/or assets with sensors and more. Many
organizations believe that their unstructured data stores include information
that could help them make better business decisions. Unfortunately,
it’s often very difficult to analyze unstructured data.