Tutorial: Big data analytics: Concepts, technologies, and applications

Abstract

We have entered the big data era. Organizations are capturing, storing, and analyzing data that has high volume, velocity, and variety and comes from a variety of new sources, including social media, machines, log files, video, text, image, RFID, and GPS. These sources have strained the capabilities of traditional relational database management systems and spawned a host of new technologies, approaches, and platforms. The potential value of big data analytics is great and is clearly established by a growing number of studies. The keys to success with big data analytics include a clear business need, strong committed sponsorship, alignment between the business and IT strategies, a fact-based decision-making culture, a strong data infrastructure, the right analytical tools, and people skilled in the use of analytics. Because of the paradigm shift in the kinds of data being analyzed and how this data is used, big data can be considered to be a new, fourth generation of decision support data management. Though the business value from big data is great, especially for online companies like Google and Facebook, how it is being used is raising significant privacy concerns. © 2014 by the Association for Information Systems.