Gartner defines "Dark Data" as "Information assets that organizations collect, process and store in the course of their regular business activity, but generally fail to use for other purposes". By definition, much - if not most - of the data an organization stores can be referred to as "Dark Data". If leveraged well, it can be utilized for gaining better insights that directly improve decision making or improve operations. But "Dark Data" presents compliance, security and financial risks as well, if it is not managed appropriately.
Hadoop clusters and NoSQL databases can now be used to process large amounts of data - making it more feasible to process "Dark Data" - a long neglected information asset. This will unlock business value. As a result, data that was neglected can now be used to generate business value.