The Big Data Challenge

The Big Data Challenges

Tiffany Mills

CIS500016VA016-1134-001: Info Syst Decision-Making

Dr. Raied Salman

April 27, 2013

Founded in 1927, Volvo is a multinational vehicle manufacturer with production facilities in 25 countries, 74,000 employees, and sales in more than 100 markets. Volvo Group's sales totaled 130 billion SEK in 2000. Volvo's car making division was sold to Ford between 1999 and 2010. During the transition of ownership, Volvo wanted to improve its business intelligence (BI) capabilities and operational efficiency. The company Volvo decided to roll out a data management solution that would streamline its IT environment, provides graphical self-service reporting capabilities, and increases cooperation.

In an effort for Volvo to address their needs for a cost-effective infrastructure that provided the ability to quickly scale up to handle a high volume of traffic and that would also serve a global audience with high performance, Volvo chose to implement a cloud-based solution. Volvo was recommended that the company use Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. It provides developers with on-demand compute, storage, and bandwidth, and a content distribution network to host, scale, and manages web applications through Microsoft data centers (Microsoft, 2011).

In today’s world, automobiles are equipped with sensors, controllers and microprocessors per vehicle. In the cars, computers perform a wide range of control, monitoring and diagnostic functions in the engine, transmission, braking and traction control systems, cruise control, climate control, passenger compartment, and instrument panel. To make efficient use of the data provided in a new direct-to-customer relationship, Volvo has built capabilities centrally. Volvo began by centralizing their customer...