Data Mining technology is often utilized by business intelligence organizations, and financial analysts, but is increasingly being used in science in order to extract information from the enormous data sets generated by modern experimental and observational methods. 

Most common data mining applications involve customer behavior forecasting and pattern recognition, especially in business environments, where a high level of interaction exists between the customer and the company and thus, the collected data are rich in quantity and quality. Retail markets, banks, shipping or automobile companies, telecommunication companies, mass media and advertising corporations, are the best candidates to employ such business intelligence applications.

From a scientific point of view, the need for data mining applications is usually encountered in the fields of biology, medicine and chemistry.