3 must-read big data reports 

IDC Canada – Big Data Inflection Point in Canada: From Experiment to Platform – This IDC report review the state of big data projects and intentions in Canada.

“Big data and analytics hits its stride in Canada through 2016 as organizations apply machine learning, natural language processing, and analysis tools to a wide variety of data sources,” said the report’s author, David Senf, program vice-president for infrastructure solutions at IDC Canada.

One in three organizations in Canada plant to implement their first big data project in just 12 months and the Canadian financial sector is leading the way, according to IDC Canada. This report covers issues around big data analytics and discovery, big data decision support and automation, data access, analysis and delivery, Hadoop, as well as value-added content.

451 Research – Using the Cloud to Maximize the Value of Big Data – In this report, 451 Research delves into how six organizations and their cloud-based data adoption initiatives.

The study identifies five fundamental ways corporations are obtaining value from big data using the cloud:

• Faster time-to-market
• Lower TCO
• Reduced management overhead
• Improved developer agility
• New revenue opportunities

Splunk, Big Data and the Future of Security – Current security tools and practices are no longer adequate to meet today’s threats. Splunk provides and roadmap for organizations on how to reach a point where they can competently combat advanced persistent threats with a big data view.

Splunk teaches readers how to detect complex advanced persistent threats by monitoring the network, host and application behaviour across an organization’s IT data.

This paper discussed issues such as:

• Protecting information assets
• Maintaining signature-based and preventive controls
• Finding and removing viruses