SQU forum deliberates business intelligence, big data analysis

MUSCAT: The 2nd Information Systems Forum 2018: Business Intelligence and Big Data Analytics” was held at the Cultural Centre in Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) on Thursday under the auspices of Dr Khalifa bin Abdullah al Barwani, CEO of National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).

The forum was organised by the Information Systems Department of the SQU College of Economics and Political Science.

With the emergence of new technologies, such as cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobile technologies, and wide applications of social media, organisations generate a huge volume of date in different forms much faster than before. Big data increasingly drives decision-making and changes the landscape of business intelligence (BI).

Integrating advanced analytics for big data with BI systems is an important step towards gaining full return on investment.

In his welcome address, Dr Khamis al Yahyaee, Dean of the College of Economics and Political Science, said that the forum addresses issues related to Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence that are of concerns to organisations and individuals.

He said that the forum was aimed at creating new opportunities for academics and practitioners in private and governmental sectors to exchange their knowledge and allow for discussion on the problems and solutions in the emerging area, and raising awareness about Big Data Analytics and Business Intelligence issues.

Mohammed bin Saleh al Farsi, Open Data Expert, delivered the first keynote address on data governance and policies. Data is an important element of a wide variety of key policy documents and action plans.

In this context, Al Farsi discussed the issues and analysed the challenges associated with data governance and evaluated practical cases in the Sultanate.

Dr Beatriz De La Iglesia, Senior Lecturer, University of East Anglia, UK, delivered the international keynote speech on ‘Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) road map for BI’. KDD is an interdisciplinary area focusing upon methodologies for extracting useful knowledge from data. The ongoing rapid growth of online data due to the Internet and the widespread use of databases have created an immense need for KDD methodologies.

The talk of Dr Beatriz focused on the challenges on extracting knowledge from data and outlined major contributions of KDD field.

Two panel discussions namely “Big data and social media analytics” and “Mobile business intelligence” were also held as part of the forum.

In her closing remarks, Dr Kamla al Busaidi, Head of the Information Systems Department at SQU, said that with the transformation toward smart cities and knowledge-based economy, our aim is to stress the importance of business intelligence and big data analytics for governments and organisations and for the information systems major programmes and research. — ONA