Book Review: Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave

Bill Franks offers an excellent guide to understanding and utilizing Big Data in his informative and fun book, Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave. It's a well written account of the "Big Data" craze that does a good job of emphasizing the longevity of this movement. With how often the phrase Big Data gets thrown around today, it's easy to write it off as merely a fad. Bill gives his audience a great understanding of why this is not true and why all organizations should be taking the appropriate steps to enhance their analytics.

In a sense, the book is a how-to for both organizations that need to initiate a Big Data movement and those that simply need to enhance their current system. I found this particularly interesting because although I am a member of the analytic community, I am something of an outside observer as a recruiter. Big Data is going to blow us all over, and Bill Franks is letting us know what we should expect.

From my perspective as a recruiter, I do wish that the author gave some short term solutions to the ever expanding shortage of advanced analytics professionals who can manipulate this data, but I suppose that's because there is no short term answer! This is a great read for both a technical and non-technical audience. I learned a lot and I highly recommend it.