Tony Cosentino is the vice president and research director for Ventana Research. Tony is responsible for the business analytics research practice including business intelligence, location intelligence and operational intelligence. He is an expert in helping business and IT organizations develop strategies to use information and analytics to take smarter actions and make better decisions. Tony is responsible for researching the intersection where information can be used and enhanced with business technology innovations including: business analytics, big data, cloud computing, business collaboration, mobile technology and social media. Tony is an expert in market research and business intelligence with decades of experience. Tony has helped business and IT use technology across marketing, sales and customer service and brought one of the first global deployments of a web-based architecture for Voice of the Customer (VOC). Tony is an accomplished author with his book titled Into the River: How Big Data, the Long Tail, and Situated Cognition are the Changing the World of Market Insights Forever. Tony has held research and consulting positions in the technology industry over the last two decades and worked at companies like General Electric, TNS and Ipsos. Tony holds a BA in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego and an MBA with a focus in Business Analytics and Computing Systems (BACS) from the San Francisco State University School of Business. His work has been published in Business 2.0, Marketing News and many other publications. You can find Tony on Twitter at @tonycosentinovr and on LinkedIn and reached via email at tony.consentino@ventanaresearch.com and read his blog at http://tonycosentino.ventanaresearch.com.