Case: Big Data, Big Rewards

Q1: Describe the kinds of big data collected by the organizations described in this case.

There are mainly three kinds of big data collected by the organizations described in this case.

1.      British Library

o   IBM Bigsheets help the British Library to handle with huge quantities of data and extract the useful knowledge.

o   British Library responsible for preserving British Web sites that no longer exist but need to be preserved for historical purpose. Example, Web sites for past politicians.

o   IBM BigSheets helps the British Library to process large amounts of data quickly and efficiently.

2.      New York City Police Department (NYPD)

o   City Crime and Criminal Data

o   State and federal law enforcement agencies are analyzing big data to discover hidden patterns in criminal activity. The Real Time Crime Center data warehouse contains millions of data points on city crime and criminals.

o   IBM and New York City Police Department (NYPD) work together to create the warehouse, which contains data on over 120 million criminal complaints, 31 million criminal crime records and 33 billion public records.

3.      Vestas

o   Turbine Location and wind data for organizations to go green.

o   Vesta’s wind library currently stores data on perspective turbine location and global weather system.

o   Vestas implemented a solution consisting of IBM InfoSphere BigInsights software running on a high-performance IBM System x iDataPlex server.

Q2: List and describe the business intelligence technologies described in this case.

1.      IBM BigSheets

IBM BigSheets is a cloud application used to perform ad hoc analytical at web scale on unstructured and structured content. IBM Bigsheets is an insight engine that helps extract, annotate, and visually analyze vast amounts of unstructured Web data, delivering the results via a Web browser. For example, users can see search results in a pie chart. State and federal law enforcement agencies are analyzing big data to discover hidden patterns in criminal activity such as correlations between time, opportunity, and organizations, or non-obvious relationships between individuals and criminal organizations that would be difficult to uncover in smaller data sets. IBM BigSheets built atop the Hadoop framework, so it can process large amounts of data quickly and efficiency.

2.      Real Time Crime Center (RTTC)

The Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) is a centralized technology center for the New York (NYPD) and Houston Police Departments. RTCC data warehouse contains millions of data points on city crime and criminals and billions of public records. The systems search capabilities allow the NYPD to quickly obtain data from any of these data sources. Information on criminals. Such as suspect’s photo with details of past offences or addresses with maps, can be visualized in seconds on a video wall or install relayed to officers at a crime scene.

3.      IBM InfoSphere BigInsights

IBM InfoSphere BigInsights brings the power of Hadoop to the enterprise. Apache Hadoop is the open source software framework, used to reliably managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data. Vestas increased the size of its wind library and is able manage and analyze location and weather data with models that are much more powerful and precise. It implemented a solution consisting of IBM InfoSphere BigInsights software running on a high-performance IBM System x iDataPlex server.

Q3: Why did the companies described in this case need to maintain and analyze? What business benefits did they obtain?

1.      The British Library

The British Library needed to maintain and analyze big data because Traditional data management methods proved inadequate to archive billions of Web pages and legacy analytics tools couldn’t extract useful knowledge from such quantities of data.

2.      New York Police Department (NYPD)

NYPD need to maintain and analyze big data because:

      Allow the NYPD quickly respond on the criminals occurred.

      Help NYPD to obtain sources of the suspects, such as suspect’s photo, past offences or addresses with maps, can be visualized in seconds on a video wall.

3.      Vestas

Vestas need to maintain and analyze big data because :

o   Vestas is the world’s largest wind energy company.

o   Location data are important to Vestas so that can accurately place its turbines.

o   Areas without enough wind will not generate the necessary power.

o   Area with too much wind may damage the turbines.

o   Therefore, Vesta relies on location-based data to determine the best spots to install their turbines.

o   Vesta’s Wind Library currently stores 2.8 petabytes od data.

What business benefits did they obtain?

The business benefits for maintaining and analyzing big data are as follows:

1.      Competitive advantages

2.      Performance Enhancement

3.      Increase customer satisfaction

4.      Attract more customer and generate more revenue

5.      Improved decision making (faster & accurate)

6.      Excellence operational

7.      Reduced cost and time spent

Q4: Identify three decisions that were improved by using big data.

1.      Optimal uses of resources and operational time

By using the big data, the companies can optimal uses of their resources to enhance performance. Vestas can forecast optimal turbine placement in 15 minutes instead of three weeks, saving a months of development time for turbine site.

2.      Quick and effective decision making

Decision making improves and can be quickly and effective by using big data. Visitor of The British Library and NYPD can quickly and effective searches data from the British Library Web sites. NYPD can make a faster decision to gather the suspect’s detail by using The Real Time Crime Center.

3.      Reduce operational cost and other related cost

Company quickly make the right decision and hence will eliminate wrong decision. Example, Hertz was able quickly adjust staffing levels at its Philadelphia office during those peak times, ensuring a manager was present to resolve any issues.

Q5: What kinds of organizations are most likely to need big data management and analytical tools? Why?

1.  Organizations which responsible to store the huge information such as national library, registration department, income tax and so on because these organizations typically be a sources for government and the public.

2.    Authorities Organization such a police department, custom, immigration because they need to store a big data about criminals and also public to use for safety of the society.

3.   Organization to go green need the big data about the weather and location because the weath