36909340 - old boat steering wheel from woodSeptember 2016

Sponsored by Teradata.

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Exploring the business value that can be garnered from a data lake by examining a number of real, but anonymized, examples across different industries.

Abstract

Data lakes have been a hot topic in data management circles for over five years now. While their exact architecture is a topic of debate among IT, their general shape and structure is well explained in the metaphor of a body of water where business can explore and play with a wide range of big data.

This paper focuses on the business value that can be garnered from a data lake. The approach is to examine a number of real, but anonymized, examples across different industries and to allow them to speak for themselves. Specific lessons are then generalized into a set of “Big Pictures”.

The use cases are divided into three broad categories named in the spirit of the data lake metaphor: fishing for behavioral data to understand customers, swimming with customers to enhance engagement, and navigating to operation excellence to maintain engagement. These categories offer a progression in business focus from marketing, through support, to operations and production uses of the data lake.

Finally, a short, more formal appendix is provided to clarify a common question among both business and IT: what is the difference between a data lake and a data warehouse.