Modern Big Data Architectures

CHAPTER 1Introduction

1.1 Motivation

In recent years, big data has emerged as one of the leading trends not only in computer science, but due to its potential, also in economy, science, and major branches of the industry. People realized that huge data sets have become a key asset which should be taken into account in evaluating business opportunities, company valuations, or product development. Several major mergers and acquisitions in recent years have been driven not only in order to gain synergies, customer base, or market access, but also to obtain access to valuable customer data. For example, Microsoft's acquisition of Linkedin gave it data on jobs, skills, career paths, and a contact network of millions of workers across the globe.

For technology vendors, consultancies as well as numerous startups, this rapid growth opened up huge new business opportunities. According to IDC, the market value of big data and business analytics is expected to grow beyond $200 Billion by the year 2020. Forbes [2017]. These forecasts have fueled huge investments in big data related research and development efforts, both in academia and in industry, leading to a wide range of proposed architectures, solutions, models, algorithms, as well as commercial products.

Large industry players have made the big data concept fundamental to their products, architectures, and strategies. Every day, new ventures emerge which concentrate solely on big data as an opportunity for innovation and growth. ...