Preliminary Study on a System for Visualization of Big Data in SMEs

The 2012 White Paper on Information and Communications in Japan issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan advocates use of big data under its “Special Theme: ICT-induced and accelerated Disaster Recovery and Japan’s Re-birth.” However, the analysis in the Japan Users Association of Information Systems’ white paper on its 2014 IT trend survey for companies reports that less than 10% of companies utilize big data, and it would appear that progress in its use is centered on large firms. Under such conditions, use of big data is becoming a challenge for the purpose of ensuring the survival and success of SMEs as well. As a result, R&D and technological support for SMEs are becoming pressing issues. However, at present there has been almost no academic research concerning policies and future directions for use of big data at SMEs. Accordingly, this study conducted the modelization of the procedure for visualization of big data for SMEs. Specifically, we organized the procedure as a tutorial, from obtaining data of Japanese hot-spring areas using web scraping, to visualizing them using the visualization software Cytoscape.