Big Data Analytics: Turning Big Data into Big Money

Think bigger and see bigger returns with Big Data Analytics You're sitting on a gold mine. Buried deep within your backup, in your data archives, or in the data sets right under your nose, are the secrets to increasing your revenue, finding new business relationships, and making more intuitive decisions that will take your organization to the next level. In Big Data Analytics , you'll discover how to harness, analyze, and leverage your data to see big returns to your bottom line. Author Frank Ohlhorst shares his decades of technical experience to show you how to implement Big Data analytics into any size business or industry. In Big Data Analytics, you'll discover how to mine the value of the data, expose trends that can be converted into competitive strategies, and explore data sources in more interesting and applicable ways to develop intelligence that solves problems and increases profits, productivity, and business opportunities. Exploring the concepts behind Big Data, how to analyze that data, and the payout you can achieve from acting on your data, Big Data Analytics reveals: The 4Vs of Big Data and the intrinsic value of each Big Data and the business case: beyond Hadoop Building the Big Data dream team Choosing among in-house, outsourced, or hybrid approaches The evolution of Big Data: today, tomorrow, and the next day Best and worst practices Bringing it all together Any organization looking to stay ahead of the pack needs to get its arms around Big Data today. Learn how to make your data a key component of your growth strategy with Big Data Analytics .

Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Chapter 1 What Is Big Data? 1 The Arrival of Analytics 2 Where Is the Value? 3 More to Big Data Than Meets the Eye 5 Dealing with the Nuances of Big Data 6 An Open Source Brings Forth Tools 7 Caution: Obstacles Ahead 8 Chapter 2 Why Big Data Matters 11 Big Data Reaches Deep 12 Obstacles Remain 13 Data Continue to Evolve 15 Data and Data Analysis Are Getting More Complex 17 The Future Is Now 18 Chapter 3 Big Data and the Business Case 21 Realizing Value 22 The Case for Big Data 22 The Rise of Big Data Options 25 Beyond Hadoop 27 With Choice Come Decisions 28 Chapter 4 Building the Big Data Team 29 The Data Scientist 29 The Team Challenge 30 Different Teams, Different Goals 31 Don’t Forget the Data 32 Challenges Remain 32 Teams versus Culture 34 Gauging Success 35 Chapter 5 Big Data Sources 37 Hunting for Data 38 Setting the Goal 39 Big Data Sources Growing 40 Diving Deeper into Big Data Sources 42 A Wealth of Public Information 43 Getting Started with Big Data Acquisition 44 Ongoing Growth, No End in Sight 46 Chapter 6 The Nuts and Bolts of Big Data 47 The Storage Dilemma 47 Building a Platform 52 Bringing Structure to Unstructured Data 57 Processing Power 59 Choosing among In–house, Outsourced, or Hybrid Approaches 61 Chapter 7 Security, Compliance, Auditing, and Protection 63 Pragmatic Steps to Securing Big Data 64 Classifying Data 65 Protecting Big Data Analytics 66 Big Data and Compliance 67 The Intellectual Property Challenge 72 Chapter 8 The Evolution of Big Data 77 Big Data: The Modern Era 80 Today, Tomorrow, and the Next Day 84 Changing Algorithms 90 Chapter 9 Best Practices for Big Data Analytics 93 Start Small with Big Data 94 Thinking Big 95 Avoiding Worst Practices 96 Baby Steps 98 The Value of Anomalies 101 Expediency versus Accuracy 103 In–Memory Processing 104 Chapter 10 Bringing It All Together 111 The Path to Big Data 112 The Realities of Thinking Big Data 113 Hands–on Big Data 115 The Big Data Pipeline in Depth 116 Big Data Visualization 121 Big Data Privacy 122 Appendix Supporting Data 125 “The MapR Distribution for Apache Hadoop” 126 “High Availability: No Single Points of Failure” 142 About the Author 151 Index 153

FRANK J. OHLHORST is an award-winning technology journalist, professional speaker, and IT business consultant with over twenty-five years of experience in the technology arena. He has written for several leading technology publications, speaks at many industry conferences, and has several industry certifications.