You have big plans for how you want to use Big Data to improve your business. If you are planning to accomplish all your goals with your committed but small team, you are in for a big challenge; you may end up short staffed and under-skilled and will slowly get frustrated by the lack of progress as per your expectations. For additional help in getting specialized skills, expert guidance, and expediting your goals, you can build an extended ecosystem and draw upon from the skills and knowledge of that ecosystem. Most companies with successful Big Data projects have leveraged such external capabilities.

Building such an external network requires very different approaches than building an in-house team. Taking advantage of such a network effectively requires considerable effort from your end. In this section, we shall discuss some ideas around building and using an extended ecosystem to further your Big Data agenda.