As world activities become more integrated, the rate of data growth has been increasing exponentially. And as a result of this data explosion, current data management methods can become inadequate. People are using the term big data (sometimes referred to as Big Data) to describe this latest industry trend. IBM® is preparing the next generation of technology to meet these data management challenges. To provide the capability of incorporating big data sources and analytics of these sources, IBM developed a stream-computing product that is based on the open source computing framework Apache Hadoop. Each product in the framework provides unique capabilities to the data management environment, and further enhances the value of your data warehouse investment. In this IBM Redbooks® publication, we describe the need for big data in an organization. We then introduce IBM InfoSphere® BigInsights™ and explain how it differs from standard Hadoop. BigInsights provides a packaged Hadoop distribution, a greatly simplified installation of Hadoop and corresponding open source tools for application development, data movement, and cluster management. BigInsights also brings more options for data security, and as a component of the IBM big data platform, it provides potential integration points with the other components of the platform. A new chapter has been added to this edition. Chapter 11 describes IBM Platform Symphony®, which is a new scheduling product that works with IBM Insights, bringing low-latency scheduling and multi-tenancy to IBM InfoSphere BigInsights. The book is designed for clients, consultants, and other technical professionals.

There are multiple uses for big data in every industry—from analyzing larger volumes of data than was previously possible to driving more precise answers, to analyzing data at rest and data in motion to capture opportunities that were previously lost. A big data platform will enable your organization to tackle complex problems that previously could not be solved using traditional infrastructure. As the amount of data available to enterprises and other organizations dramatically increases, more and more companies are looking to turn this data into actionable information and intelligence in real time. Addressing these requirements requires applications that are able to analyze potentially enormous volumes and varieties of continuous data streams to provide decision makers with critical information almost instantaneously. This IBM Redbooks® publication is written for decision-makers, consultants, IT architects, and IT professionals who will be implementing a solution with IBM InfoSphere Streams.