Big Data Analysis on Clouds

The huge amount of data generated, the speed at which it is produced, and its heterogeneity in terms of format, represent a challenge to the current storage, process and analysis capabilities. Those data volumes, commonly referred as Big Data, can be exploited to extract useful information and to produce helpful knowledge for science, industry, public services and in general for humankind. Big Data analytics refer to advanced mining techniques applied to Big Data sets. In general, the process of knowledge discovery from Big Data is not so easy, mainly due to data characteristics, as size, complexity and variety, that require to address several issues. Cloud computing is a valid and cost-effective solution for supporting Big Data storage and for executing sophisticated data mining applications. Big Data analytics is a continuously growing field, so novel and efficient solutions (i.e., in terms of platforms, programming tools, frameworks, and data mining algorithms) spring up everyday to cope with the growing scope of interest in Big Data. This chapter discusses models, technologies and research trends in Big Data analysis on Clouds. In particular, the chapter presents representative examples of Cloud environments that can be used to implement applications and frameworks for data analysis, and an overview of the leading software tools and technologies that are used for developing scalable data analysis on Clouds.