
ix
Preface
In the international marketplace, businesses, suppliers, and customers create
and consume vast amounts of information. Gartner
*
predicts that enterprise
data in all forms will grow up to 650% over the next ve years. According
to IDC,
†
the world’s volume of data doubles every 18 months. Digital infor-
mation is doubling every 1.5 years and will exceed 1000 exabytes next year
according to the MIT Centre for Digital Research. In 2011, medical centers
held almost 1 billion terabytes of data. That is almost 2000 billion le cabinets’
worth of information. This deluge of data, often referred to as Big Data, obvi-
ously creates a challenge ...