Unit 1:

Introduction to big data:

Due to the advent of new technologies, devices, and communication means like social networking sites, the amount of data
produced by mankind is growing rapidly every year. The amount of data produced by us from the beginning of time till 2003
was 5 billion gigabytes. If you pile up the data in the form of disks it may fill an entire football field. The same amount was
created in every two days in 2011, and in every ten minutes in 2013. This rate is still growing enormously. Though all this
information produced is meaningful and can be useful when processed, it is being neglected.

What is Big Data?

Big data is a collection of large datasets that cannot be processed using traditional computing techniques. It is not a single
technique or a tool, rather it has become a complete subject, which involves various tools, technqiues and frameworks.

What Comes Under Big Data?

Big data involves the data produced by different devices and applications. Given below are some of the fields that come
under the umbrella of Big Data.

• Black Box Data − It is a component of helicopter, airplanes, and jets, etc. It captures voices of the flight
crew, recordings of microphones and earphones, and the performance information of the aircraft.
• Social Media Data − Social media such as Facebook and Twitter hold information and the views posted
by millions of people across the globe.
• Stock Exchange Data − The stock exchange data holds information about the ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ decisions
made on a share of different companies made by the customers.
• Power Grid Data − The power grid data holds information consumed by a particular node with respect to
a base station.
• Transport Data − Transport data includes model, capacity, distance and availability of a vehicle.
• Search Engine Data − Search engines retrieve lots of data from different databases.

Thus Big Data includes huge volume, high velocity, and extensible variety of data. The data in it will be of three types.

• Structured data − Relational data.

• Semi Structured data − XML data.
 • Unstructured data − Word, PDF, Text, Media Logs.

Benefits of Big Data

• Using the information kept in the social network like Facebook, the marketing agencies are learning about
the response for their campaigns, promotions, and other advertising mediums.
• Using the information in the social media like preferences and product perception of their consumers,
product companies and retail organizations are planning their production.
• Using the data regarding the previous medical history of patients, hospitals are providing better and quick
service.

Big Data Technologies

Big data technologies are important in providing more accurate analysis, which may lead to more concrete decision-making
resulting in greater operational efficiencies, cost reductions, and reduced risks for the business.

To harness the power of big data, you would require an infrastructure that can manage and process huge volumes of
structured and unstructured data in realtime and can protect data privacy and security.

There are various technologies in the market from different vendors including Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, etc., to handle big
data. While looking into the technologies that handle big data, we examine the following two classes of technology −

Operational Big Data

This include systems like MongoDB that provide operational capabilities for real-time, interactive workloads where data is
primarily captured and stored.

NoSQL Big Data systems are designed to take advantage of new cloud computing architectures that have emerged over the
past decade to allow massive computations to be run inexpensively and efficiently. This makes operational big data
workloads much easier to manage, cheaper, and faster to implement.

Some NoSQL systems can provide insights into patterns and trends based on real-time data with minimal coding and without
the need for data scientists and additional infrastructure.

Analytical Big Data

These includes systems like Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) database systems and MapReduce that provide analytical
capabilities for retrospective and complex analysis that may touch most or all of the data.

MapReduce provides a new method of analyzing data that is complementary to the capabilities provided by SQL, and a
system based on MapReduce that can be scaled up from single servers to thousands of high and low end machines.

These two classes of technology are complementary and frequently deployed together.

Operational vs. Analytical Systems

Operational Analytical

Latency 1 ms - 100 ms 1 min - 100 min

Concurrency 1000 - 100,000 1 - 10

Access Pattern Writes and Reads Reads

Queries Selective Unselective

Data Scope Operational Retrospective

End User Customer Data Scientist

Technology NoSQL MapReduce, MPP Database

Big Data Challenges

The major challenges associated with big data are as follows −

• Capturing data

• Curation

• Storage

• Searching

• Sharing

• Transfer

• Analysis

• Presentation

IntroductIon to bIg data platform:

What is Big Data?

Data science is the study of data analysis by advanced technology (Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big data). It
processes a huge amount of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data to extract insight meaning, from which
one pattern can be designed that will be useful to take a decision for grabbing the new business opportunity, the
betterment of product/service, and ultimately business growth. Data science process to make sense of Big data/huge
amount of data that is used in business. The workflow of Data science is as below:
• Objective and the issue of business determining – What is the organization’s objective, what level the
organization wants to achieve, and what issue the company is facing -these are the factors under
consideration. Based on such factors which type of data are relevant is considered.
• Collection of relevant data- relevant data are collected from various sources.
• Cleaning and filtering collected data – non-relevant data are removed.
• Explore the filtered, cleaned data – Finding any hidden pattern, synchronization in data, plotting them in the
graph, chart, etc. form that is understandable to a non-technical person.
• Creating a model by analyzing data – creating a model, validate it.
• Visualization of finding by interpreting data or creating a model for a business person.
• Help businesspeople in making the decision and taking the step for the sack of business growth.
Data Mining: It is a process of extracting insight meaning, hidden patterns from collected data that is useful to take a
business decision for the purpose of decreasing expenditure and increasing revenue. Big Data: This is a term related to
extracting meaningful data by analyzing the huge amount of complex, variously formatted data generated at high speed,
that cannot be handled, or processed by the traditional system. Data Expansion Day by Day: Day by day amount of data
increasing exponentially because of today’s various data production sources like a smart electronic devices. As per IDC
(International Data Corporation) report, new data created per each person in the world per second by 2020 will be 1.7 MB.
The amount of total data in the world by 2020 will reach around 44 ZettaBytes (44 trillion GigaByte) and 175 ZettaBytes by
2025. It is being seen that the total volume of data is double every two years. The total size growth of data worldwide, year
to year as per the IDC report is shown below:
 Image Source: Google

Source of Big Data:

• Social Media: Today’s world a good percent of the total world population is engaged with social media like
Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Each activity on such media like uploading a photo,
or video, sending a message, making comment, putting like, etc create data.
• A sensor placed in various places: Sensor placed in various places of the city that gathers data on
temperature, humidity, etc. A camera placed beside the road gather information about traffic condition and
creates data. Security cameras placed in sensitive areas like airports, railway stations, and shopping malls
create a lot of data.
• Customer Satisfaction Feedback: Customer feedback on the product or service of the various company on
their website creates data. For Example, retail commercial sites like Amazon, Walmart, Flipkart, and Myntra
gather customer feedback on the quality of their product and delivery time. Telecom companies, and other
service provider organizations seek customer experience with their service. These create a lot of data.
• IoT Appliance: Electronic devices that are connected to the internet create data for their smart functionality,
examples are a smart TV, smart washing machine, smart coffee machine, smart AC, etc. It is machine-
generated data that are created by sensors kept in various devices. For Example, a Smart printing machine –
is connected to the internet. A number of such printing machines connected to a network can transfer data
within each other. So, if anyone loads a file copy in one printing machine, the system stores that file content,
and another printing machine kept in another building or another floor can print out that file hard copy.
Such data transfer between various printing machines generates data.
• E-commerce: In e-commerce transactions, business transactions, banking, and the stock market, lots of
records stored are considered one of the sources of big data. Payments through credit cards, debit cards, or
other electronic ways, all are kept recorded as data.
• Global Positioning System (GPS): GPS in the vehicle helps in monitoring the movement of the vehicle to
shorten the path to a destination to cut fuel, and time consumption. This system creates huge data on
vehicle position and movement.
• Transactional Data: Transactional data, as the name implies, is information obtained through online and
offline transactions at various points of sale. The data contains important information about transactions,
such as the date and time of the transaction, the location where it took place, the items bought, their prices,
the methods of payment, the discounts or coupons that were applied, and other pertinent quantitative data.
These are some of the sources of transactional data: orders for payment, Invoices, E-receipts and
recordkeeping etc.
• Machine Data: Automatically generated machine data is produced in reaction to an event or according to a
set timetable. This indicates that all of the data was compiled from a variety of sources, including satellites,
desktop computers, mobile phones, industrial machines, smart sensors, SIEM logs, medical and wearable
devices, road cameras, IoT devices, and more. Businesses can monitor consumer behaviour thanks to these
sources. Data derived from automated sources expands exponentially in tandem with the market’s shifting
external environment. These sensors are used to capture this kind of information: In a broader sense,
machine data includes data that is generated by servers, user applications, websites, cloud programmes, and
other sources

What is a big data platform?

The constant stream of information from various sources is becoming more intense[4], especially with the advance in technology. And this

is where big data platforms come in to store and analyze the ever-increasing mass of information.

A big data platform is an integrated computing solution that combines numerous software systems, tools, and hardware for big data

management. It is a one-stop architecture that solves all the data needs of a business regardless of the volume and size of the data at

hand. Due to their efficiency in data management, enterprises are increasingly adopting big data platforms to gather tons of data and

convert them into structured, actionable business insights[5].

Currently, the marketplace is flooded with numerous Open source and commercially available big data platforms. They boast different

features and capabilities for use in a big data environment.

Characteristics of a big data platform

Any good big data platform should have the following important features:

•
o Ability to accommodate new applications and tools depending on the evolving business needs

o Support several data formats

o Ability to accommodate large volumes of streaming or at-rest data

o Have a wide variety of conversion tools to transform data to different preferred formats

o Capacity to accommodate data at any speed

o Provide the tools for scouring the data through massive data sets

o Support linear scaling

o The ability for quick deployment

o Have the tools for data analysis and reporting requirements

challenges of conventIonal systems:

The challenges in Big Data are the real implementation hurdles. These require immediate attention and need to be handled because if
not handled then the failure of the technology may take place which can also lead to some unpleasant result. Big data challen ges
include the storing, analyzing the extremely large and fast-growing data.
Some of the Big Data challenges are:
1. Sharing and Accessing Data:
• Perhaps the most frequent challenge in big data efforts is the inaccessibility of data sets from external
sources.
• Sharing data can cause substantial challenges.
• It include the need for inter and intra- institutional legal documents.
 • Accessing data from public repositories leads to multiple difficulties.
• It is necessary for the data to be available in an accurate, complete and timely manner b ecause if data
in the companies information system is to be used to make accurate decisions in time then it becomes
necessary for data to be available in this manner.

2. Privacy and Security:

• It is another most important challenge with Big Data. This challenge includes sensitive, conceptual,
technical as well as legal significance.
• Most of the organizations are unable to maintain regular checks due to large amounts of data
generation. However, it should be necessary to perform security checks and observation in real time
because it is most beneficial.
• There is some information of a person which when combined with external large data may lead to
some facts of a person which may be secretive and he might not want the owner to know this
information about that person.
• Some of the organization collects information of the people in order to add value to their business.
This is done by making insights into their lives that they’re unaware of.

3. Analytical Challenges:
• There are some huge analytical challenges in big data which arise some main challenges questions like
how to deal with a problem if data volume gets too large?
• Or how to find out the important data points?
• Or how to use data to the best advantage?
• These large amount of data on which these type of analysis is to be done can be structured (organized
data), semi-structured (Semi-organized data) or unstructured (unorganized data). There are two
techniques through which decision making can be done:
• Either incorporate massive data volumes in the analysis.
• Or determine upfront which Big data is relevant.

4. Technical challenges:
• Quality of data:
• When there is a collection of a large amount of data and storage of this data, it comes
at a cost. Big companies, business leaders and IT leaders always want large data
storage.
• For better results and conclusions, Big data rather than having irrelevant data, focuses
on quality data storage.
• This further arise a question that how it can be ensured that data is relevant, how
much data would be enough for decision making and whether the stored data is
accurate or not.
• Fault tolerance:
• Fault tolerance is another technical challenge and fault tolerance computing is
extremely hard, involving intricate algorithms.
• Nowadays some of the new technologies like cloud computing and big data always
intended that whenever the failure occurs the damage done should be within the
acceptable threshold that is the whole task should not begin from the scratch.
• Scalability:
• Big data projects can grow and evolve rapidly. The scalability issue of Big Data has
lead towards cloud computing.
• It leads to various challenges like how to run and execute various jobs so that goal of
each workload can be achieved cost-effectively.
• It also requires dealing with the system failures in an efficient manner. This leads to a
big question again that what kinds of storage devices are to be used.

data analysIs:
Analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Especially, valuable in areas rich with recorded
information, analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming, and operation research to qualify
performance. Analytics often favors data visualization to communicate insight.
Firms may commonly apply analytics to business data, to describe, predict, and improve business performance. Especially, area s
within include predictive analytics, enterprise decision management, etc. Since analytics can require extensi ve computation(because
of big data), algorithms and software harness the most current methods in computer science.

In a nutshell, analytics is the scientific process of transforming data into insight for making better decisions. Data Analyt ics aims to get
actionable insights resulting in smarter decisions and better business outcomes.

It is critical to design and built a data warehouse or Business Intelligence(BI) architecture that provides a flexible, multi-faceted
analytical ecosystem, optimized for efficient ingestion and analysis of large and diverse data sets.
What is Data Analytics?
In this new digital world, data is being generated in an enormous amount which opens new paradigms. As we have high computing
power as well as a large amount of data we can make use of this data to help us make data-driven decision making. The main benefits
of data-driven decisions are that they are made up by observing past trends which have resulted in beneficial results.

In short, we can say that data analytics is the process of manipulating data to extract useful trends and hidden patterns whi ch can help
us derive valuable insights to make business predictions.

Data Analytics technique and Life Cycle

Use of Data Analytics

There are some key domains and strategic planning techniques in which the Data ANlaytics has played a very important role:

• Improved Decision-Making – If we will have supporting data in favor of a decision that then we will be able to
implement them with even more success probability. For example, if a certain decision or plan has to lead to better
outcomes then there will be no doubt in implementing them again.
• Better Customer Service – Churn modeling is the best example of this in which we try to predict or identify what leads
to customer churn and change those things accordingly so, that the attrition of the customers is as low as possible
which is a most important factor in any organization.
• Efficient Operations – Data Analytics can help us understand what is the demand of the situation and what should be
done to get better results then we will be able to streamline our processes which in turn will lead to efficient
operations.
• Effective Marketing – Market segmentation techniques have been implemented to target this important factor only in
which we are supposed to find the marketing techniques which will help us increase our sales and leads to effective
marketing strategies.
Types of Data Analytics
There are four major types of data analytics:

1. Predictive (forecasting)
2. Descriptive (business intelligence and data mining)
3. Prescriptive (optimization and simulation)
4. Diagnostic analytics

Data Analytics and its Types

Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics turn the data into valuable, actionable information. predictive analytics use s data to determine the probable
outcome of an event or a likelihood of a situation occurring. Predictive analytics holds a variety of statistical techniques from
modeling, machine, learning, data mining, and game theory that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about a
future event. Techniques that are used for predictive analytics are:
• Linear Regression
• Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
• Data Mining
Basic Corner Stones of Predictive Analytics
• Predictive modeling
• Decision Analysis and optimization
• Transaction profiling
Descriptive Analytics
Descriptive analytics looks at data and analyze past event for insight as to how to approach future events. It looks at past performance
and understands the performance by mining historical data to understand the cause of success or failure in the past. Almost all
management reporting such as sales, marketing, operations, and finance uses this type of analysis.

The descriptive model quantifies relationships in data in a way that is often used to classify customers or prospects in to groups. Unlike
a predictive model that focuses on predicting the behavior of a single customer, Descriptive analytics identifies many differ ent
relationships between customer and product.

Common examples of Descriptive analytics are company reports that provide historic reviews like:
• Data Queries
• Reports
• Descriptive Statistics
• Data dashboard
Prescriptive Analytics
Prescriptive Analytics automatically synthesize big data, mathematical science, business rule, and machine learning to make a
prediction and then suggests a decision option to take advantage of the prediction.

Prescriptive analytics goes beyond predicting future outcomes by also suggesting action benefits from the predictions and showing the
decision maker the implication of each decision option. Prescriptive Analytics not only anticipates what will happen and when to
happen but also why it will happen. Further, Prescriptive Analytics can suggest decision options on how to take advantage of a future
opportunity or mitigate a future risk and illustrate the implication of each decision option.

For example, Prescriptive Analytics can benefit healthcare strategic planning by using analytics to leverage operational and usage data
combined with data of external factors such as economic data, population demography, etc.

Diagnostic Analytics
In this analysis, we generally use historical data over other data to answer any question or for the solution of any problem. We try to
find any dependency and pattern in the historical data of the particular problem.

For example, companies go for this analysis because it gives a great insight into a problem, and they also kee p detailed information
about their disposal otherwise data collection may turn out individual for every problem and it will be very time -consuming. Common
techniques used for Diagnostic Analytics are:

• Data discovery
• Data mining
• Correlations

Future Scope of Data Analytics

1. Retail: To study sales patterns, consumer behavior, and inventory management, data analytics can be applied in the
retail sector. Data analytics can be used by retailers to make data-driven decisions regarding what products to stock,
how to price them, and how to best organize their stores.
2. Healthcare: Data analytics can be used to evaluate patient data, spot trends in patient health, and create
individualized treatment regimens. Data analytics can be used by healthcare companies to enhance patient outcomes
and lower healthcare expenditures.
3. Finance: In the field of finance, data analytics can be used to evaluate investment data, spot trends in the financial
markets, and make wise investment decisions. Data analytics can be used by financial institutions to lower risk and
boost the performance of investment portfolios.
4. Marketing: By analyzing customer data, spotting trends in consumer behavior, and creating customized marketing
strategies, data analytics can be used in marketing. Data analytics can be used by marketers to boost the efficiency of
their campaigns and their overall impact.
5. Manufacturing: Data analytics can be used to examine production data, spot trends in production methods, and boost
production efficiency in the manufacturing sector. Data analytics can be used by manufacturers to cut costs and
enhance product quality.
6. Transportation: To evaluate logistics data, spot trends in transportation routes, and improve transportation routes, the
transportation sector can employ data analytics. Data analytics can help transportation businesses cut expenses and
speed up delivery times.

nature of data:

In recent years, Big Data was defined by the “3Vs” but now there is “6Vs” of Big Data which are also termed as the characteristics of
Big Data as follows:
1. Volume:
• The name ‘Big Data’ itself is related to a size which is enormous.
• Volume is a huge amount of data.
• To determine the value of data, size of data plays a very crucial role. If the volume of data is very large, then it is
actually considered as a ‘Big Data’. This means whether a particular data can actually be considered as a Big D ata or
not, is dependent upon the volume of data.
• Hence while dealing with Big Data it is necessary to consider a characteristic ‘Volume’.
• Example: In the year 2016, the estimated global mobile traffic was 6.2 Exabytes (6.2 billion GB) per month. Also, by
the year 2020 we will have almost 40000 Exabytes of data.
2. Velocity:
• Velocity refers to the high speed of accumulation of data.
• In Big Data velocity data flows in from sources like machines, networks, social media, mobile phones etc.
• There is a massive and continuous flow of data. This determines the potential of data that how fast the data is
generated and processed to meet the demands.
• Sampling data can help in dealing with the issue like ‘velocity’.
 • Example: There are more than 3.5 billion searches per day are made on Google. Also, Facebook users are increasing by
22%(Approx.) year by year.
3. Variety:
• It refers to nature of data that is structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.
• It also refers to heterogeneous sources.
• Variety is basically the arrival of data from new sources that are both inside and outside of an enterprise. It can be
structured, semi-structured and unstructured.
• Structured data: This data is basically an organized data. It generally refers to data that has defined
the length and format of data.
• Semi- Structured data: This data is basically a semi-organised data. It is generally a form of data that
do not conform to the formal structure of data. Log files are the examples of this type of data.
• Unstructured data: This data basically refers to unorganized data. It generally refers to data that
doesn’t fit neatly into the traditional row and column structure of the relational database. Texts,
pictures, videos etc. are the examples of unstructured data which can’t be stored in the form of rows
and columns.
4. Veracity:
• It refers to inconsistencies and uncertainty in data, that is data which is available can sometimes get messy and quality
and accuracy are difficult to control.
• Big Data is also variable because of the multitude of data dimensions resulting from multiple disparate data types and
sources.
• Example: Data in bulk could create confusion whereas less amount of data could convey half or Incomplete
Information.
5. Value:
• After having the 4 V’s into account there comes one more V which stands for Value! The bulk of Data having no Value
is of no good to the company, unless you turn it into something useful.
• Data in itself is of no use or importance but it needs to be converted into something valuable to extract Information.
Hence, you can state that Value! is the most important V of all the 6V’s.
6. Variability:
• How fast or available data that extent is the structure of your data is changing?
• How often does the meaning or shape of your data change?
• Example: if you are eating same ice-cream daily and the taste just keep changing

analytIc processes and tools:

Data Analytics is an important aspect of many organizations nowadays. Real-time data analytics is essential for the success of a major
organization and helps drive decision making. This article will help you gain knowledge about the various data analytic t ools that are in
use and how they differ.

There are myriads of data analytics tools that help us get important information from the given data. We can use some of thes e free
and open source tools even without any coding knowledge. These tools are used for deriving useful insights from the given data
without sweating too much. For example, you could use them to determine the better among some cricket player based on various
statistics and yardsticks. They have helped in strengthening the decision making the process by providing useful information that can
help reach better conclusions.

There are many tools that are used for deriving useful insights from the given data. Some are programming based and others ar e non-
programming based. Some of the most popular tools are:

• SAS
• Microsoft Excel
• R
• Python
• Tableau
• RapidMiner
• KNIME
As we’re growing with the pace of technology, the demand to track data is increasing rapidly. Today, almost 2.5quintillion bytes of
data are generated globally and it’s useless until that data is segregated in a proper structure. It has become crucial for businesses to
maintain consistency in the business by collecting meaningful data from the market today and for that, all it takes is the ri ght data
analytic tool and a professional data analyst to segregate a huge amount of raw data by which then a company can make the right
approach.
There are hundreds of data analytics tools out there in the market today but the selection of the right tool will depend upon your
business NEED, GOALS, and VARIETY to get business in the right direction. Now, let’s check out the top 10 analytics tools in big data.

1. APACHE Hadoop

It’s a Java-based open-source platform that is being used to store and process big data. It is built on a cluster system that allows the
system to process data efficiently and let the data run parallel. It can process both structured and unstructured data from one server
to multiple computers. Hadoop also offers cross-platform support for its users. Today, it is the best big data analytic tool and is
popularly used by many tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, etc.
Features of Apache Hadoop:
• Free to use and offers an efficient storage solution for businesses.
• Offers quick access via HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System).
• Highly flexible and can be easily implemented with MySQL, and JSON.
• Highly scalable as it can distribute a large amount of data in small segments.
• It works on small commodity hardware like JBOD or a bunch of disks.

2. Cassandra

APACHE Cassandra is an open-source NoSQL distributed database that is used to fetch large amounts of data. It’s one of the most
popular tools for data analytics and has been praised by many tech companies due to its high scalability and availability without
compromising speed and performance. It is capable of delivering thousands of operations every second and can handle petabytes of
resources with almost zero downtime. It was created by Facebook back in 2008 and was published publicly.
Features of APACHE Cassandra:
• Data Storage Flexibility: It supports all forms of data i.e. structured, unstructured, semi-structured, and allows users to
change as per their needs.
• Data Distribution System: Easy to distribute data with the help of replicating data on multiple data centers.
• Fast Processing: Cassandra has been designed to run on efficient commodity hardware and also offers fast storage and
data processing.
• Fault-tolerance: The moment, if any node fails, it will be replaced without any delay.

3. Qubole

It’s an open-source big data tool that helps in fetching data in a value of chain using ad-hoc analysis in machine learning. Qubole is a
data lake platform that offers end-to-end service with reduced time and effort which are required in moving data pipelines. It is
capable of configuring multi-cloud services such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Besides, it also helps in lowering the cost of cloud
computing by 50%.

Features of Qubole:
• Supports ETL process: It allows companies to migrate data from multiple sources in one place.
• Real-time Insight: It monitors user’s systems and allows them to view real-time insights
• Predictive Analysis: Qubole offers predictive analysis so that companies can take actions accordingly for targeting
more acquisitions.
• Advanced Security System: To protect users’ data in the cloud, Qubole uses an advanced security system and also
ensures to protect any future breaches. Besides, it also allows encrypting cloud data from any potential threat.

4. Xplenty

It is a data analytic tool for building a data pipeline by using minimal codes in it. It offers a wide range of solutions for sales, marketing,
and support. With the help of its interactive graphical interface, it provides solutions for ETL, ELT, etc. The best part of using Xplenty is
its low investment in hardware & software and its offers support via email, chat, telephonic and virtual meetings. Xplenty is a
platform to process data for analytics over the cloud and segregates all the data together.
Features of Xplenty:
• Rest API: A user can possibly do anything by implementing Rest API
• Flexibility: Data can be sent, and pulled to databases, warehouses, and salesforce.
• Data Security: It offers SSL/TSL encryption and the platform is capable of verifying algorithms and certificates
regularly.
• Deployment: It offers integration apps for both cloud & in-house and supports deployment to integrate apps over the
cloud.
5. Spark

APACHE Spark is another framework that is used to process data and perform numerous tasks on a large scale. It is also used to
process data via multiple computers with the help of distributing tools. It is widely used among data analysts as it offers e asy-to-use
APIs that provide easy data pulling methods and it is capable of handling multi-petabytes of data as well. Recently, Spark made a
record of processing 100 terabytes of data in just 23 minutes which broke the previous world record of Hadoop (71 minutes). This is
the reason why big tech giants are moving towards spark now and is highly suitable for ML and AI today.
Features of APACHE Spark:
• Ease of use: It allows users to run in their preferred language. (JAVA, Python, etc.)
• Real-time Processing: Spark can handle real-time streaming via Spark Streaming
• Flexible: It can run on, Mesos, Kubernetes, or the cloud.

6. Mongo DB

Came in limelight in 2010, is a free, open-source platform and a document-oriented (NoSQL) database that is used to store a high
volume of data. It uses collections and documents for storage and its document consists of key-value pairs which are considered a
basic unit of Mongo DB. It is so popular among developers due to its availability for multi-programming languages such as Python,
Jscript, and Ruby.
Features of Mongo DB:
• Written in C++: It’s a schema-less DB and can hold varieties of documents inside.
• Simplifies Stack: With the help of mongo, a user can easily store files without any disturbance in the stack.
• Master-Slave Replication: It can write/read data from the master and can be called back for backup.

7. Apache Storm

A storm is a robust, user-friendly tool used for data analytics, especially in small companies. The best part about the storm is that it
has no language barrier (programming) in it and can support any of them. It was designed to handle a pool of large data in fault-
tolerance and horizontally scalable methods. When we talk about real-time data processing, Storm leads the chart because of its
distributed real-time big data processing system, due to which today many tech giants are using APACHE Storm in their system. Some
of the most notable names are Twitter, Zendesk, NaviSite, etc.
Features of Storm:
• Data Processing: Storm process the data even if the node gets disconnected
• Highly Scalable: It keeps the momentum of performance even if the load increases
• Fast: The speed of APACHE Storm is impeccable and can process up to 1 million messages of 100 bytes on a single
node.

8. SAS

Today it is one of the best tools for creating statistical modeling used by data analysts. By using SAS, a data scientist can mine,
manage, extract or update data in different variants from different sources. Statistical Analytical System or SAS allows a user to access
the data in any format (SAS tables or Excel worksheets). Besides that it also offers a cloud platform for business analytics called SAS
Viya and also to get a strong grip on AI & ML, they have introduced new tools and products.
Features of SAS:
• Flexible Programming Language: It offers easy-to-learn syntax and has also vast libraries which make it suitable for
non-programmers
• Vast Data Format: It provides support for many programming languages which also include SQL and carries the ability
to read data from any format.
• Encryption: It provides end-to-end security with a feature called SAS/SECURE.

9. Data Pine

Datapine is an analytical used for BI and was founded back in 2012 (Berlin, Germany). In a short period of time, it has gained much
popularity in a number of countries and it’s mainly used for data extraction (for small-medium companies fetching data for close
monitoring). With the help of its enhanced UI design, anyone can visit and check the data as per their requirement and offer in 4
different price brackets, starting from $249 per month. They do offer dashboards by functions, industry, and platform.

Features of Datapine:
• Automation: To cut down the manual chase, datapine offers a wide array of AI assistant and BI tools.
• Predictive Tool: datapine provides forecasting/predictive analytics by using historical and current data, it derives the
future outcome.
 • Add on: It also offers intuitive widgets, visual analytics & discovery, ad hoc reporting, etc.

10. Rapid Miner

It’s a fully automated visual workflow design tool used for data analytics. It’s a no-code platform and users aren’t required to code for
segregating data. Today, it is being heavily used in many industries such as ed-tech, training, research, etc. Though it’s an open-source
platform but has a limitation of adding 10000 data rows and a single logical processor. With the help of Rapid Miner, one can easily
deploy their ML models to the web or mobile (only when the user interface is ready to collect real-time figures).
Features of Rapid Miner:
• Accessibility: It allows users to access 40+ types of files (SAS, ARFF, etc.) via URL
• Storage: Users can access cloud storage facilities such as AWS and dropbox
• Data validation: Rapid miner enables the visual display of multiple results in history for better evaluation.
Conclusion
Big data has been in limelight for the past few years and will continue to dominate the market in almost every sector for every market
size. The demand for big data is booming at an enormous rate and ample tools are available in the market today, all you need is th e
right approach and choose the best data analytic tool as per the project’s requirement.

analysIs vs reportIng:

Analytics and reporting can help a business improve operational efficiency and production in several ways. Analytics is the process of
making decisions based on the data presented, while reporting is used to make complicated information easier to understand. Let’s
discuss analytics vs reporting.

Analytics and reporting are often referred to as the same. Although both take in data as input and present it in charts, graphs, or
dashboards, they have several key differences. This post will cover analytics and reporting, key differences, and its importance in business.

What is analytics vs reporting?

Analytics is the technique of examining data and reports to obtain actionable insights that can be used to comprehend and improve
business performance. Business users may gain insights from data, recognize trends, and make better decisions with analytics.

On the one hand, analytics is about finding value or making new data to help you decide. This can be performed either manually or
mechanically. Next-generation analytics uses new technologies like AI or machine learning to make predictions about the future based on
past and present data.

The steps involved in data analytics are as follows:

• Developing a data hypothesis

• Data collection and transformation
• Creating analytical models to analyze and provide insights
• Utilization of data visualization, trend analysis, deep dives, and other tools.
• Making decisions based on data and insights

On the other hand, reporting is the process of presenting data from numerous sources clearly and simply. The procedure is always
carefully set out to report correct data and avoid misunderstandings.

Today’s reporting applications offer cutting-edge dashboards with advanced data visualization features. Companies produce a variety of
reports, such as financial reports, accounting reports, operational reports, market studies, and more. This makes it easier to see how each
function is operating quickly.

In general, the procedures needed to create a report are as follows:

• Determining the business requirement

• Obtaining and compiling essential data
 • Technical data translation
• Recognizing the data context
• Building dashboards for reporting
• Providing real-time reporting
• Allowing users to dive down into reports

Key differences between analytics vs reporting

Differences between analytics and reporting can significantly benefit your business. If you want to use both to their full potential and not
miss out on essential parts of either one knowing the difference between the two is important. Some key differences are:

Analytics Reporting

Analytics is the method of examining and analyzing summarized data to Reporting is an action that includes all the needed information and data and is put t
make business decisions. an organized way.

Questioning the data, understanding it, investigating it, and presenting it to Identifying business events, gathering the required information, organizing, summar
the end users are all part of analytics. presenting existing data are all part of reporting.

The purpose of analytics is to draw conclusions based on data. The purpose of reporting is to organize the data into meaningful information.

Analytics is used by data analysts, scientists, and business people to make Reporting is provided to the appropriate business leaders to perform effectively and
effective decisions. within a firm.

Analytics and reporting can be used to reach a number of different goals. Both of these can be very helpful to a business if they are used
correctly.

Importance of analytics vs reporting

A business needs to understand the differences between analytics and reporting. Better data knowledge through analytics and reporting
helps businesses in decision-making and action inside the organization. It results in higher value and performance.

Analytics is not really possible without advanced reporting, but analytics is more than just reporting. Both tools are made for sharing
important information that will help business people make better decisions

Transforming data into insights

Analytics assists businesses in converting information into insights, whereas reporting transforms data into information. Analytics aims to
take the data and figure out what it means.

Analytics examines report data to determine why and how to fix organizational problems. Analysts begin by asking questions that may
arise as they examine how the data in the reports has been structured. A qualified analyst can make recommendations to improve
business performance once the data analysis is complete.

Analytics and reporting go hand in hand, and you can’t have one without the other. The raw data are the first step in the whole process.
The data then needs to be put together to make it look like accurate information. Reports can be comprehensive and employ a range of
technologies. Still, their main objective is always to make it simpler for analysts to understand what is actually happening within the
organization.

Conclusion

Reporting and analytics have distinct differences. Reporting focuses on arranging and presenting facts, while analytics provides actionable
insights. However, both are important and connected. Your implementation plans will stay on track if everyone on your team agrees on
what they mean when they talk about analytics or reporting.
Organizations all around the world are utilizing knowledge management systems and solutions such as InsightsHub to manage data better,
reduce the time it takes to obtain insights, and increase the utilization of historical data while cutting costs and increasing ROI.

QuestionPro is much more than just survey software; we have solutions for every problem and industry. We also have platforms like our
InsightsHub research library for managing data.