Using ‘Big Data’ for analytics and decision support

People and the computers they use are generating large amounts of varied data. The phenomenon of capturing and trying to use all of the semi-structured and unstructured data has been called by vendors and bloggers ‘Big Data’. Organisations can capture and store data of many types from almost any source, but capturing and storing data only adds value when it has a useful purpose. Big Data must be used to provide input to analytics and decision support capabilities if it is to create real value for organisations. Some bloggers, industry leaders and academics have become disillusioned by the term Big Data. It is a marketing term and not a technical term. More descriptive terms like unstructured data, process data and machine data are more useful for information technology (IT) professionals. Researchers need to study and document use cases that explain how specific, novel data, so-called Big Data, can be used to support decision-making.