Title: The relationships between definitions of big data, business intelligence and business analytics: a literature review

Authors: Kenneth Mashingaidze; Judy Backhouse

Addresses: Information Systems, School of Economic and Business Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa ' Information Systems, School of Economic and Business Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Abstract: Advances in technology and increasing data volumes have led to new tools and techniques to exploit data and improve decision-making. Terms used to refer to these tools and techniques include big data (BD), business intelligence (BI) and business analytics (BA). Definitions of these terms are not agreed on. In particular, the terms are used as subsets or special cases of each other and this leads to confusion about their meaning and how they relate. This paper examines both academic and practitioner literature that deals with two or more of the terms to synthesise definitions and describe the relationships between them. BD is data with high volume, variety of sources and high velocity. BI is a set of tools and techniques to use data for decision-making. BA is an advanced form of BI. BD is data that can be used in both BI and BA.

Keywords: big data; BD; business intelligence; business analytics; definition; relationship; literature review; information technology; data analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2017.087749

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2017 Vol.26 No.4, pp.488 - 505

Received: 19 Feb 2016
Accepted: 15 Jun 2016
Published online: 01 Nov 2017 *

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