16,121 research outputs found
How can SMEs benefit from big data? Challenges and a path forward
Big data is big news, and large companies in all sectors are making significant advances in their customer relations, product selection and development and consequent profitability through using this valuable commodity. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have proved themselves to be slow adopters of the new technology of big data analytics and are in danger of being left behind. In Europe, SMEs are a vital part of the economy, and the challenges they encounter need to be addressed as a matter of urgency. This paper identifies barriers to SME uptake of big data analytics and recognises their complex challenge to all stakeholders, including national and international policy makers, IT, business management and data science communities.
The paper proposes a big data maturity model for SMEs as a first step towards an SME roadmap to data analytics. It considers the ‘state-of-the-art’ of IT with respect to usability and usefulness for SMEs and discusses how SMEs can overcome the barriers preventing them from adopting existing solutions. The paper then considers management perspectives and the role of maturity models in enhancing and structuring the adoption of data analytics in an organisation. The history of total quality management is reviewed to inform the core aspects of implanting a new paradigm. The paper concludes with recommendations to help SMEs develop their big data capability and enable them to continue as the engines of European industrial and business success. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Storage Solutions for Big Data Systems: A Qualitative Study and Comparison
Big data systems development is full of challenges in view of the variety of
application areas and domains that this technology promises to serve.
Typically, fundamental design decisions involved in big data systems design
include choosing appropriate storage and computing infrastructures. In this age
of heterogeneous systems that integrate different technologies for optimized
solution to a specific real world problem, big data system are not an exception
to any such rule. As far as the storage aspect of any big data system is
concerned, the primary facet in this regard is a storage infrastructure and
NoSQL seems to be the right technology that fulfills its requirements. However,
every big data application has variable data characteristics and thus, the
corresponding data fits into a different data model. This paper presents
feature and use case analysis and comparison of the four main data models
namely document oriented, key value, graph and wide column. Moreover, a feature
analysis of 80 NoSQL solutions has been provided, elaborating on the criteria
and points that a developer must consider while making a possible choice.
Typically, big data storage needs to communicate with the execution engine and
other processing and visualization technologies to create a comprehensive
solution. This brings forth second facet of big data storage, big data file
formats, into picture. The second half of the research paper compares the
advantages, shortcomings and possible use cases of available big data file
formats for Hadoop, which is the foundation for most big data computing
technologies. Decentralized storage and blockchain are seen as the next
generation of big data storage and its challenges and future prospects have
also been discussed
Towards Analytics Aware Ontology Based Access to Static and Streaming Data (Extended Version)
Real-time analytics that requires integration and aggregation of
heterogeneous and distributed streaming and static data is a typical task in
many industrial scenarios such as diagnostics of turbines in Siemens. OBDA
approach has a great potential to facilitate such tasks; however, it has a
number of limitations in dealing with analytics that restrict its use in
important industrial applications. Based on our experience with Siemens, we
argue that in order to overcome those limitations OBDA should be extended and
become analytics, source, and cost aware. In this work we propose such an
extension. In particular, we propose an ontology, mapping, and query language
for OBDA, where aggregate and other analytical functions are first class
citizens. Moreover, we develop query optimisation techniques that allow to
efficiently process analytical tasks over static and streaming data. We
implement our approach in a system and evaluate our system with Siemens turbine
data
Smart Asset Management for Electric Utilities: Big Data and Future
This paper discusses about future challenges in terms of big data and new
technologies. Utilities have been collecting data in large amounts but they are
hardly utilized because they are huge in amount and also there is uncertainty
associated with it. Condition monitoring of assets collects large amounts of
data during daily operations. The question arises "How to extract information
from large chunk of data?" The concept of "rich data and poor information" is
being challenged by big data analytics with advent of machine learning
techniques. Along with technological advancements like Internet of Things
(IoT), big data analytics will play an important role for electric utilities.
In this paper, challenges are answered by pathways and guidelines to make the
current asset management practices smarter for the future.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, Proceedings of 12th World Congress on
Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM) 201
CERN openlab Whitepaper on Future IT Challenges in Scientific Research
This whitepaper describes the major IT challenges in scientific research at CERN and several other European and international research laboratories and projects. Each challenge is exemplified through a set of concrete use cases drawn from the requirements of large-scale scientific programs. The paper is based on contributions from many researchers and IT experts of the participating laboratories and also input from the existing CERN openlab industrial sponsors. The views expressed in this document are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the view of their organisations and/or affiliates
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