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Big Data: From Acquisition to Analysis

2012 will likely be remembered as the year of big data, as a new generation of technologies enables organizations to acquire, organize, and analyze the exponentially growing volume of typically less-structured data generated from a realm of new sources, such as social media, e-mail, sensors, and photographs, among others.

For decades, companies have been making business decisions based on transactional data stored in relational databases. Big data is in many ways the evolution of this process, except that the volume, velocity, variety, and unstructured nature of the data present new technical challenges as well as business opportunities.

Oracle has produced a series of five short videos that offer a quick and compelling high-level introduction to big data.

Episode 1: Overview for the Boss. The series kicks off with this video, in which two team members explain to their CIO the potential business value of adopting a big data strategy.

Episode 2: Hadoop. A key big data enabler, Apache Hadoop supports highly distributed and scalable data storage while taking advantage of low-cost hardware. This video explains the two main components of Apache Hadoop: a distributed file system and a MapReduce programming framework.

Episode 3: Acquiring Big Data. Before you begin to acquire big data, you need to examine the kind of data you want and how you plan to use it. This video explores typical use cases for Oracle NoSQL Database and Hadoop distributed file system.

Episode 4: Organizing Big Data. After data has been acquired, it still needs to be organized before being moved into the data warehouse. This video explains how Apache Hadoop handles this task—including effective solutions to tricky integration challenges.

Episode 5: Analyzing Big Data. Analyzing big data is in many ways qualitatively different than traditional business analytics. This video explores how to use innovative statistical analysis to generate new insight and deliver new value to the business.

Will 2013 be YOUR year for big data? Find out the latest information about Oracle and big data and be sure to check out our e-book Meeting the Challenge of Big Data.

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