Abstract

The age of Big data is here, and the effective managing of this data can determine whether an organization succeeds or falls behind its competitors. In more extreme cases it can determine how effectively a country can manage a pandemic, as we have seen with the Covid-19 pandemic. Dealing with Big data present many challenges but equally there are a lot of solutions to these challenges via the use of available technologies. Furthermore, Technology in regard to managing Big data is widely available and has evolved in the past few years and there are very few excuses to why industry practitioners should not be employing scalable Big data technologies. In this study the researcher has identified the different challenges that arise when dealing with Big data and how the different technologies available on the market have been designed to deal with different challenges that Big data present. The introduction of new hardware architectures, as well as the continual accumulation of data, provide new data management difficulties. Reasoning with respect to a predefined set of resources is no longer relevant (i.e., computing, storage and main memory). Instead, using scalable technologies and techniques, data processing algorithms and processes must be designed with unlimited resources in mind. The research enquires into the different technologies currently being used by industry practitioners in Namibia and the different challenges they encounter in regard to their respective approaches. Additionally, a short online survey was also conducted to investigate the knowledge of relevant stakeholders in terms of Big data technologies. Finally, this study urges industry practitioners to desert the use of outdated technologies and to encourage one another to employ scalable technologies by providing incentives.

Keywords: Industry practitioners, Hadoop, Scalable, Big data, Data analytics