Every organization needs to identify their sustainable competitive advantage that differentiates them from competitors and makes them valuable to their customers, employees and owners. A sustainable competitive advantage could be the result of a cost differentiation, as is the case with a company like Wal-Mart, or it could be the result of a product differentiation, as is the case with a company like Google. In the coming years, big data will have an increasing importance in how organizations identify and implement their sustainable competitive advantages. Organizations are now attempting to further the capabilities of big data by harnessing the power of increased technological advances that are able to capture, store, and analyze significantly …show more content…
One of the primary offerings of big data services is that the service is run on a Hadoop platform. A Hadoop platform is unique in that it allows the user to store files across multiple servers, which allow for significantly larger data sets to be utilized. Furthermore, it uses MapReduce, which provides a framework for analyzing many different types of data. Three companies that currently license big data software to customers will be evaluated based on several criteria, such as functionality, business application, and strategic direction. The vendors that will be evaluated are Amazon Web Services Inc., DataStax Inc., and IBM …show more content…
Netflix was originally launched as a provider of DVDs by mail, but has since pivoted its approach to a streaming delivery service. As Netflix would track viewing patterns of its customers, the data that it collected was soon becoming very large. In order to recommend new content for its customers, Netflix needed a reliable data source that could accurately predict new content from its users. Furthermore, Netflix’s legacy data management system had a single point of failure, which would ultimately put the entire system at risk. The solution that DataStax offered was to deliver a reliable data storage system, with 100% uptime and cost-effective scalability, as well as expert system support. Ultimately, the implementation of this system proved to be a success. The system effectively captured every detail of customer viewing and log data, which resulted in a throughput of more than 10 million transactions per second. This system can provide the management of Netflix with the peace of mind, in knowing that their data is being successfully captured, stored, and analyzed. Now, the management of Netflix can focus on providing analyzing the data to drive more value for its