Analytics Magazine Analytics Magazine, July/August 2014 | Page 45

The six Vs of big data n Volume (data at rest): terabytes to exabytes, petabytes to zettabytes of lots of data n Velocity (data in motion): streaming data, milliseconds to seconds, how fast data is being produced and how fast the data must be processed to meet the need or demand n Variety (data in many forms): structured, unstructured, text, multimedia, video, audio, sensor data, meter data, html, text, e-mails, etc. n Veracity (data in doubt): uncertainty due to data more than half of all analytics projects fail because they aren’t completed within budget or on schedule, or because they fail to deliver the features and benefits that are optimistically agreed on at their outset. Today, an abundance of knowledge and experience exists to have successful data and analytics-enabled decision support systems. So why do so many of these projects fail, and why are so many executives and users still so unhappy? While there are many reasons A NA L Y T I C S inconsistency and incompleteness, ambiguities, latency, deception, model approximations, accuracy, quality, truthfulness or trustworthiness n Variability (data in change): the differing ways in which the data may be interpreted; different questions require different interpretations n Value (data for co-creation and deep learning): The relative importance of different complex data from distributed locations. Big data with deep analytics means greater insight and better decisions, something that every organization needs. for the high failure rate, the biggest reason is that companies still treat these projects as just another IT project. Big data analytics is neither a product nor a computer system. Instead, it should be considered a constantly evolving strategy, vision and architecture that continuously seeks to align an organization’s operations and direction with its strategic business goals and tactical and operational decisions. Table 1 includes a list of common mistakes that can doom analytics projects. J U LY / A U G U S T 2 014 | 45