Data has always been there. Right back at the start of the last century, organisations of the age still ran their operations using log books, paper folios and hand-drawn accounts sheets. It was still data, but it was predominantly static, often duplicated or inaccurate, tough to search and only accessible to a few people. 

After the second and third industrial revolutions and the arrival of the PC, things finally changed. Software spreadsheets became ubiquitous and dedicated...