Integrating Big Data solutions into enterprize architecture : constructing the entire information landscape

Behind any information management practice lies the core doctrines of Data Quality, Data Governance, and Metadata Management along with considerations for Privacy and Legal concerns, which today have become the information landscape of an organization. Big Data, which is the data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems, needs to be integrated into this information landscape. The reasons are that Big Data information is being generated at a high volume, with a rapid rate of change, and encompassing a broad range of sources and includes both structured and unstructured data. The ability to understand and manage the sources of the data, and then integrate the data from these sources into a larger business application can provide significant value to the organization. Organizations that have had already developed its Enterprize Architecture and now want to integrate a Big Data solution will face issues and concerns related to their Information Architecture, Data Architecture, Business Architecture and Technology Architecture. Enterprize Architecture plays a major role in ensuring that an organization maximizes the business opportunities posed by Big Data. Organizations may have the best technology and the best people but if the internal culture has silos and lacks the data sharing as outlined in the current EA, they are less likely to achieve success with Big Data. In this paper we discuss a framework to construct an Entire Information Landscape (EIL) and identify the requirements in constructing this information landscape. We also examine the integration of Big Data with EA to develop the EIL.