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In this information-driven age, we have reached the crossroads of a data revolution. We are at an inflection point in using revolutionary technologies provided by Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT) to gain intelligence, streamline operations, and gain competitive business advantage. Augmenting and transforming existing data warehouses and analytics footprints is the order of the day at many organizations. Before embarking on a journey to incorporate newer technologies, we should ask ourselves few basic questions and answer "why" we were doing this and "how" the technologies can support the business strategy. Even though these questions sound intuitive and basic, it is the right place to start. Our experience is that organizations that understand business drivers, critical success factors, and priorities before embarking on the journey are far more successful. This also helps when garnering internal support needed to launch the initiatives faster and effectively, while successfully reaping the projected business benefits.

Fear of being left behind can be powerful motivation. Today, many organizations embark on building Big Data and Internet of Things prototypes simply because they fear that their competitors are gaining a head start. Being first to market with differentiated solutions is a common goal among startup companies in order to attract funding from venture capitalists. While many startups fail, some have succeeded spectacularly and established a presence in new markets that, in turn, threatened the established companies in those markets. The significant advantage gained by being early to market with innovative solutions has not been forgotten by CEOs and senior business leaders at mature companies facing new competition.

Thus far, we have defined a broad business and IT vision of a potential project as we traversed through our methodology for success. We should now also have a more detailed understanding as to the potential business goals for our project since we fused the vision with a more detailed strategy and better understanding of the organization's goals. Stakeholders and potential sponsors are now being identified. However, we are still quite far from understanding necessary data flow and processing changes that will impact our current information architecture.

This book begins with a chapter title that contains two of the most hyped technology concepts in information architecture today: Big Data and the Internet of Things. Since this book is intended for enterprise architects and information architects, as well as anyone tasked with designing and building these solutions or concerned about the ultimate success of such projects, we will avoid the hype. Instead, we will provide a solid grounding on how to get these projects started and ultimately succeed in their delivery. To do that, we first review how and why these concepts emerged, what preceded them, and how they might fit into your emerging architecture.