Big data at work: the practitioners' point of view

Big Data is one of the many hyper-hyped topics on which the Information Technology industry feeds itself. One can track its origins to visionary and provocative works such as the famous 2008 The End of Theory paper by Chris Anderson, in which the author argues that large enough amounts of data can effectively dilute and finally eliminate the conceptual difference between correlation and causation, favoring the former and rendering substantially useless the research of the latter [1]. More recently, less ambitious and more pragmatic approaches have been proposed, mostly elaborating on the 3-V model originally introduced by Gartner in 2012 [2]. According to this newer perspective, Big Data is about management of data involving combinations of Volumes, Velocity, and Variety that transcend the levels traditionally addressed by IT. A fourth V was later added, bringing in the additional important element of Veracity.