Friday, March 30, 2012

Big Data is Big Business


When we hear the term “Big Data” we think we know what that is, but do we really?

Big Data is big business, and everyone is talking about it.  However you will be hard pressed to come up with a simple definition, I'd like to break down what Big Data is, and put it in terms that we can all understand.

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data–so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: from sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos posted online, transaction records of online purchases, and from cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is Big Data.

The size of Big Data is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set.

The challenges from big data can be broken into three categories:

Volume – Big data comes in one size: large. Enterprises are awash with data, easily amassing terabytes and even petabytes of information.

Velocity – Often time-sensitive, big data must be used as it is streaming in to the enterprise in order to maximize its value to the business
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Variety – Big data extends beyond structured data, including unstructured data of all varieties: text, audio, video, click streams, log files and more.

The benefits of Big Data are huge, more and more companies and governments are working with larger and larger datasets allowing analysts to spot business trends, prevent diseases, and even combat crime.

So whether you know it or not you are an active participant and beneficiary of Big Data, and hopefully now you have a better understanding of what Big Data is.

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