Business analytics : an introduction

"Preface It is plain and simple: Big Data and business analytics are hot! Whether the cover of the October 2012 Harvard Business Review, the December 2012 MIT conference on "Big Data: The Management Revolution," or the January 2013 issue of KMWorld, these emerging areas will continue to gain ground with great momentum in the coming years. According to a Cisco study, as mentioned in the January 2013 KMWorld issue, Kapil Baskhi (Chief Architect, Cisco Public Sector) states that global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes annually by 2016, which is a fourfold increase from 2011. By 2016, there will be 19 billion global network connections, the equivalent of two-and-a-half connections for every person on earth. According to Dan Vesset, Program VP for Business Analytics Solutions at IDC (in the same KMWorld issue), the Big Data market is expected to reach $16.9 billion by 2015, up from $3.2 billion in 2010. Steve Lohr's December 30, 2012 New York Times article headline indicates, "Sure, Big Data Is Great--But So Is Intuition." The point here is that with all this data coming in at various volumes, velocities, and varieties, how can we make sense of it all, especially for improving decision-making capabilities in organizations? This is where the field of business analytics can add value. Think about cybersecurity, finance, marketing, healthcare, education, energy, and many other sectors--all of these fields could benefit from applying and improving their analytics. Better detection of fraud through visual analytics and better prediction of the likelihood of someone getting an infection while in the hospital are interesting examples where analytics play a role"--