Hadoop: 5 Undeniable Truths

Yes, you still need a traditional data warehouse after beginning work with Hadoop. Here are four more fundamental points to know about the big data platform from +InformationWeek.

Data Experts Discuss Their Dream Analytics Projects

Data analytics is an ever-evolving space, decades old but new at the same time. Data scientists, faced with an expanding universe of data and a steady stream of new tools, bring an artful combination of hard mathematics skills, creativity, and intuition to the search for solutions hiding in data.

The art of data science and analytics, unfortunately, isn’t limited only by the imaginations of its practitioners. Business considerations such as time, competing priorities, and, of course, money, have a hand in determining which ideas become working projects and which remain wishful thinking.

+Data Informed  asked several data practitioners what projects they would  work on if time, money, and staff were unlimited. The answers reveal the passions and, in some cases, the frustrations of experts who see problems up close every day and know they have access to the tools that could help solve them, if only resources would allow.

ClearStory CEO: How Apache Spark is helping bring analytics to the average Joe

With a new analytics cloud service unveiled earlier this month, CEO Sharmila Mulligan explains how +ClearStory Data's engine is shifting data insights to ordinary users.  Article in +ZDNet .

8 big trends in big data analytics

Big data technologies and practices are moving quickly. Here's what you need to know to stay ahead of the game from +Computerworld

Salesforce.com Enters the BI Market with Wave, the Salesforce Analytics Cloud

Blog from +Information Management discussing the annoucement.

Big Data Integration and Your Customer Genome

One of business’ Big Data challenges is the integration of different data silos. The integration of these disparate customer data helps your analytics team to identify the interrelationships among the different pieces of customer information, including their values, interests, attitudes about your brand, interactions with your brand and more. Integrating information/facts about your customers allows you to gain an understanding about how all the diverse variables work together (i.e., are related to each other), driving deeper customer insight.  Article from +Bob Hayes

Google acquires Firebase to bolster its Cloud Platform apps

Today (21 October 2014) Google announced that Firebase, a cloud service used for building Web and mobile apps, has been added to its Cloud Platform toster.  Apps built with Firebase let devs sync data automatically between mobile and web versions, and can be used to build apps that work offline too. The platform currently has over 110,000 users.  Article from +The Next Web

Big Data's Big Mistake; Quantity over Quality

Back in the “Golden Age” of advertising, instinct, creativity, and understanding of human nature drove the industry. Talented writers and artists paced in gleaming skyscraper offices, brainstorming ideas that would shape the nation’s perception of brands and products. This era has attracted a lot of attention over the past couple of years, thanks largely to the popularity of the television drama “Mad Men.” The show reminds us that 50 years ago, no real boundaries existed between advertising and marketing, and creativity directed the process.

Unfortunately, that era is over. Quantitative data has taken the place of qualitative data, and today marketing is considered more of a science than an art. But marketers who focus only on quantitative data risk missing the full view of customers.

Article from +Data Informed

Best practices for moving workloads to the cloud

The rapid diffusion for the cloud computing paradigm and promised benefits for the adoption of cloud infrastructure are attracting a growing number of businesses and organizations.

Of course, it is essential for organizations to maximize the benefits of migration to cloud architecture by reducing costs and minimizing risks.

Article from +CSO

84% Of Enterprises See Big Data Analytics Changing Their Industries' Competitive Landscapes In The Next Year

87% of enterprises believe Big Data analytics will redefine the competitive landscape of their industries within the next three years. 89% believe that companies that do not adopt a Big Data analytics strategy in the next year risk losing market share and momentum.

Article from +Forbes

Chief Data Officers Battle Complexity, Complacency: Wells' Thomas

Even with a newly created position, a $100 million budget and a team of 600, Wells Fargo's chief data officer, Charles Thomas, says he's fighting the forces of corporate inertia.

"It's hard to get a successful company to change until something hurts," Thomas said Thursday.

Article from +Information Management

The Duality of Big Data: The Angel and the Demon

Over the last few years, we underwent a change in perspectives on the U.S. government — and more specifically, the NSA. It all started when whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked details of secret NSA data collection programs.

Since then, the media and security analysts have debated back and forth concerning the usage of these collection programs and the subsequent analysis, which can all be rolled into one proverbial buzzword: big data.

Will the good coming from big data outweigh the bad (think: big brother, privacy…)?  Interesting article from +WIRED

5 Small Businesses That Successfully Made Use of Big Data

It seems like common knowledge amongst business organizations that Big Data is exclusively for big businesses with big budgets. Whoever believes this idea doesn’t know that it is in fact one big misconception. Interesting blog from +Infinit Datum

9 Google Analytics Views that you must always use

Different people analyse and interpret the same data differently. It all depends upon the context in which they analyse and interpret the data.  Interesting article from +Himanshu Sharma

Collaborations and correlations in the common cause

What makes the world a better place? If any of us feels that we have the last word on that topic, we're either some great religious figure or insufferably self-important.  Interesting blog from +James Kobielus at +IBM Big Data & Analytics

Big Data Top Priority, Not the Case for Predictive Analytics

Less than one-third of companies have predictive analytics capabilities although big data analytics is a top priority for 88 percent of executives, according to a new study from GE and Accenture. Interesting article from +Information Management

Qantas Red Planet chief: We don't have a data strategy

Executive manager of the new audience marketing services business says standalone data strategies run the risk of analytics work being siloed across organisations.  Article from +Nadia Cameron from CMO.

5 Best Practices to Collect Data for your Small Business

Want Growth? Collect Data for your Small Business.  Blog from +Infinit Datum containing 5 best practices.

Hive Function Cheat Sheet

Working on a project in Hive? This Hive Function Cheat Sheet may come in handy from +Qubole- Big Data in the Cloud

An astrophysicist schools us on where to find data scientists

It’s hard to find qualified data scientists. Where are they hiding? Interesting article from +HP discussing the ways to find and hire data scientists with +Jessica Kirkpatrick

Most EHRs Unprepared To Integrate With Big Data, Other Technologies

While providers plan to use big data, cloud computing, mobile health and social media to optimize their electronic health record systems, 96% say their health IT infrastructure is not yet prepared to integrate such technologies,  Article from iHealthBeat.

12 things I hate about Hadoop

Hadoop is a wonderful creation, but it's evolving quickly and it can exhibit flaws. Here are my dozen downers - article by Andrew C Oliver on +InfoWorld

The Limits Of Big Data Marketing

Insight used to be considered a personal quality and one that was essential to be a successful marketer.  While other corporate functions, such as finance and logistics, were driven by cold, rational calculation, marketers were supposed to thrive at the human side of business.  Read more about it here from +Forbes

How To Identify Fake Big Data Products

One aspect of this year’s Strata and Hadoop World conference is to note is the rise of “fake Big Data” products, that is products that have added the adjective Big Data in the hope that the world will take more interest.  Read more here from +Forbes

Big Data and Quantified Self-Awareness

Big data raises, and rightfully so, data privacy concerns. We fear big data will expose our secrets to the world. But even if big data remained private, it could still expose our secrets to ourselves. In addition to its impact on our privacy, we should be concerned about how big data will impact our self-awareness.  Interesting blog from +Information Management

The Future Of Marketing Combines Big Data With Human Intuition

Great marketers have great guts.  Leo Burnett didn't need a legion of focus groups to come up with the Marlboro Man.  Steve Jobs, arguably the greatest marketing mind ever, famously eschewed market research because he didn't think customers knew what they wanted until he showed it to them. Read this interesting article from +Forbes on the future of marketing using big data and human intuition.

Westpac taps into new big data streams for customer delivery

Australian banking group deploys Teradata data analytics platforms to drive better insights around customer service delivery and fraud.  Read about this here from CMO.COM.AU

How Big Data Helps Bar Owners Sell More Beer

Like any industry, the FMCG industry can leverage the enormous potential of Big Data analytics. With each product, massive amounts of data are generated ranging from data in the production process to consumer generated data. One of those products is beer. Read more about this story here on  the Big Data-Startups website.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee speaks out on data ownership

The inventor of the web says data must be owned by its subject, rather than corporations, advertisers, and analysts.  Interesting article from +The Guardian

Databricks demolishes bigdata benchmark to prove Spark is fast on disk, too

Apache Spark is taking the big data world by storm, but the folks at Databricks wanted to disprove a misconception that its only performance advantages over Hadoop MapReduce come in-memory. Read all about it here from +gigaom

Questions about Primary and Foreign Keys You Were Too Shy to Ask

It is strange that one can ask simple questions about extended events or Hekaton at professional events and conferences without feeling embarrassed, yet nobody likes to ask vital questions about  SQL Server primary keys and foreign keys. Once more, Rob Sheldon is 'drawn to one side' to answer those questions about keys that one is too shy to ask on Simple Talk from +Red Gate Software
 .

Oracle Unveils Hadoop Data Exploration Tool

Oracle Big Data Discovery is a visual, business user-friendly alternative to Hadoop tools like Tableau Software, says Oracle.  Read more about it in this article from +InformationWeek and this blog from +Oracle

Disruption Coming For MDM - The Hub of Context

Spending time at the MDM/DG Summit in NYC this week demonstrated the wide spectrum of MDM implementations and stories out in the market. It certainly coincides with +Information Management's upcoming MDM inquiry analysis.

Big data burn-out looms as data scientists hit by work-related stress

Data scientists are over-stressed and risking burn-out because they're being forced into roles that don't suit their personalities.  Interesting article from +ZDNet

Big data and analytics third quarter 2014: analysis and outlook

Hadoop projects dominated the third-quarter big data market.

Report from +gigaom

8 Principles for Adopting Casework for Data Governance

Today, data governance units are staffed with dedicated professionals who work in a range of specialized activities. With such dedicated personnel, the rest of the enterprise recognizes it has a resource to help it with its data-related needs and has begun to request services from data governance. If data governance simply reacts in an ad hoc manner to the services requested of it, then it is likely to be limited in its effect and will have difficulty demonstrating how it is making a positive difference.

Slideshow is on +Information Management

Can Cloud-Based Solutions Reduce Costs for Electronic Payment Systems?

The complexity and prohibitively high cost of most new electronic payment systems have delayed massive deployments and generated negative perceptions among customers, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan. As a result of this, vendors in the market are looking to cloud-based solutions to reduce the costs associated with communication, hosting and access to the service or software, the firm says. Article from +Information Management

LinkedIn's 'answer' to big data problems: Pinot

Already being rolled out for internal product management teams, LinkedIn is also planning to eventually open source Pinot to the public.  Article from +ZDNet

Top-K Optimisation

Blog about Top-K optimisation from +Qubole- Big Data in the Cloud

Wearable Tech: The Next Big in Big Data

In this two part blog from +PromptCloud they look at wearable tech which can be described as the integration of digital tools in lifestyles to improve health. Collecting this personal data is the next frontier of data science. This data has tremendous impact on not just individuals but workplace, communities and culture at large.  You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Movie animation firm's big data challenges present lessons to learn

The IT staff at a computer graphics animation firm have come up with smart ways to address archiving and backup challenges with its 3D data model files as described in this article on +Tech Republic

How big data could help stop the Ebola outbreak

Big data’s potential use by humanitarian workers to stop outbreaks such as Ebola is huge, says David Richards, CEO of big data firm +WANdisco  in this article on +CNBC

How big data is fueling a new age in space exploration

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will generate 700 terabytes of data every second, equivalent to roughly 35 times the data stored in the Library of Congress so by all definitions will creata big data problem.  This is described in an article from +VentureBeat

Big Data Challenges and the Keys to Success

Narendra Mulani, senior managing director of +Accenture Analytics, part of Accenture Digital – an arm of the consulting firm that offers digital business and technology services – has a focus on data science and big data.

Accenture recently completed a survey to gain a broader, more enhanced perspective of big data successes. The firm surveyed executives from across seven industries in 19 countries to get a clear picture on whether companies are engaging with big data, what their experiences are like and what type of lessons they’re learning.

Mulani talked with +Information Management  about the survey results, the success factors that were revealed and where the big data market is heading.

Is data science bad at detecting bogus Amazon or Yelp reviews?

Thought provoking article from Data Science Central.  I'm sure what he says is true and they are obvious but I don't think anyone at those companies are interested in finding them.

The taming of big data

Big data has taken root faster than anyone could ever have expected. But thanks to an explosion of management solutions, it’s becoming manageable, says +BigInsights  research director, Shayum Rahim in this article on +CIO .

5 Big Data Hadoop Use Cases for Retail

Insightful article from +Sameer Nori on Smart Data Collective on the ways that Big Data can help the Retail world.

Does Hadoop Mean the End of the Data Model?

Interesting thoughts from +Richard Gerbrandt and Steve Dine of +Datasource Consulting, LLC on the thought that if the Hadoop environment makes it easy to load data into the HDFS without needing to define the structure of the data beforehand is there any need for a data model.

I have to agree that the requirement now seems to be merged document that is merging the data structure, definition, and the mapping back to the source to show the whole story.

Netflix Sees Big Picture With Big Data

For Netflix, the DVD delivery and video streaming company, gaining insight into how customers consume and interact with its offerings is the lifeblood of the business. And with 50 million customers in 40 different countries—and about 10 petabytes of data in its warehouse—it has plenty to draw on to find threads of information that could lead to operational efficiencies, new products and better service.  This is discussed on +Information Management by Brian Watson.

New Beginnings in Facial Recognition

Facial recognition is something humans do with relative ease, but which has been exceedingly difficult to mimic using programming logic and advanced algorithms. This is discussed in this article on Data Science Central by Sean McClure.

The Shortest Distance to the Internet of Things

Dr. Sanjay Sarma of +Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discusses how a dominant, cloud-based architecture will enable the development of the Internet of Things to its full potential on +Data Informed.

Precision Agriculture Yields Big Data Challenges

Interesting look at an area most would not have though big data was involved in from +Data Informed .

I quite understand the points that with mismatching equipment it's hard to see the benefit of using such technology.

Six things you may not know about the cloud

Six sides with text below from +ZDNet with some facts about cloud computing.

Definitely gives you some information to help you think about whether using a cloud is right for you or not.

10 most popular data science presentations on Slideshare

These presentations from an article on Data Science Central have been viewed between 14,000 times (for #10) and 75,000 times (for #1),

Interesting to review them together and compare and contrast on some of the viewpoints to see a much wider definition of a Data Scientist (which many of them seek to define).

Freaky Data Science

Interesting blog from Steve Miller on the +Information Management website.

5 Ways Big Data Impacts the Insurance Industry

In the Insurance Industry they are constantly looking for ways to increase their margin and this article from +Gil Allouche describes how they try to achieve that.

Industrial IoT 'Tremendous' Opportunity for Growth

The industrial Internet of Things represents a “tremendous opportunity for innovative companies looking to unlock new revenue sources” by packaging their products with new digital services, according to a new report from outsourcing and consulting firm +Accenture.

Bringing Data to the C Level

Interesting interview with Jill Dyche, vice president of thought leadership at SAS, discusses the trends that are elevating the data discussion and forcing the executive suite to become involved in data strategy from +Information Management.

I think she is absolutely right about vertical streams enforcing wider data standards in their own area.

Big Data: The Digital Backbone Of Formula 1

Interesting article from +Forbes discussing how F1 teams must monitor intangibles such as temperature and humidity and it’s all due to big data.

Seems big data is affecting all sorts of sports now.