In the current market there is a lot of attention for data visualization. I would like to address a number of views on this trend.

We're grabbing back to data. 
In these economically volatile times we're inclined to fall back to the ' things we know' which is grabbing back to data in this case. Why is this a step back? According to the stacked NIST architecture model that we use a lot, there is a lot more to be concerned about on top of the 'data layer'.  But it seems that the collective is leaving out that part of the model into data usage. Leaving all opportunities and intelligence on top of the data layer untouched.

Individually in organizations there are of-course enough people who care more or less about the other layers but the massive part of the attention of the collective is moving downwards. We can see this happening in the profiles that companies attract for new jobs. like 'information & database manager' which is a very rare inquiry.

Small step forward
Big data is in some way a step forward, because when the data is visualized well, then a small porthole appears towards the upper layer of the model. This is called a vertical view.

The big move
With all this focus on data, the opportunities in the horizontal focus needs extra attention. 

With this vertical (data) view a dehumanization of the systems takes place. People are excluded. Management think they are smart about knowing people's behavior without actually involving them but mining data from them.

The big move will take place when this trend is fulfilled and the focus on information in the horizontal view grows.

Billions to be earned, horizontally
We have encountered a case where the cost of labor and money due to old processes grew up to 250 million by just one governmental software environment, which we cleaned and redesigned into a new environment.

Extrapolate this cost over the rest of the governmental software machine and it becomes clear that a huge opportunity is missed by focusing only on one bit of data.

Man in the mirror
It can be hard to look to the man the mirror but i'm sure that its inevitable too. We have to clean up the enormous amount of redundant processes. With that and the design of a new clean environment to 'agile-ize' the information systems. When we start to adopt Enterprise Information Management, which is more than capable of doing that, the world will change into more balanced and human environment.

Often enough I encounter requests for professionals in the software industry where the required expertise is very specific. A candidate needs to know exactly that system or that method otherwise they will be excluded.

What I see in this is that this not only gives a narrow selection but black box thinking is also very easily overlooked. As I derived from my study Information Engineering there is the possibility to manage information systems without the need to know the content INSIDE a message. It just goes from A to B. I do this for myself throughout the last 11 years now for enterprise organizations and it works well.

Information Engineers and other disciplines as well are able to operate system/market independently through the black box methodology. There is a huge opportunity for those who understand this principle when u are open for this in your assignment.

I can see that in this time we 'grab and hold-on' to 'know principles' and black box might sounds scary, but you'll get a much more skilled professional with a wider view who can address multiple solutions to enhance your business.