Database Reference
In-Depth Information
applications. It is important that these two groups and roles work together
and have a strong relationship to provide the right level of scalability
performance and elasticity in these types of environments.
Analysts/Data Scientists
Many analysts and data scientists have been using these tools now for a
few years. Their analyses and requirements served as a major driver in the
development and enhancement of the tools in this ecosystem. Being able to
runstatisticalmodelsintools(forinstance,predictiveanalyticsintoolssuch
as Mahout) is critical to the success of persons in this role.
Many organizations are still trying to define what it means to be a data
scientist in their company, so do not get hung up on the terms
data scientist
or
analyst
. In brief, a data scientist attempts to review internal data along
with external data and based on that to then recommend opportunities for
the company to measure new things as markers of success or failure for
particular projects, divisions, organizations, or markets. For example, many
large retail organizations are rapidly growing their data science teams to
include people who understand statistics, predictive modeling, regression
analysis, market basket analysis, and additional advanced analytics.
Do not worry if you (or your developer) do not yet have all the skills you
need. You might want to learn some of them if you find them interesting.
However, your main goal is to work with these folks to provide the right
platform with the right access to additional data sets and to provide
opportunities for them to excel at their job.
Summary
In this chapter you learned how today's common industries are using big
data analytics. These industries included telecommunications, energy,
retail, data services, and IT/hosting optimization. You also learned how
these industries are turning these initiatives from incubation efforts to
operational success and how you can do the same thing in your company.
You learned about how these solutions will impact different key roles and
who the stakeholders will be in your next big data project. Specific things
for each of these roles, such as developers and systems administrators, were
covered.
