What is Big Data?
Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis.
Big data can be analyzed for insights that lead to better decisions and strategic business moves.
Big data challenges
Big data are so voluminous and complex that traditional data-processing application software are inadequate to deal with them.
Big data challenges include capturing data, data storage, data analysis, search, sharing, transfer, visualization, querying, updating, information privacy and data source.
Term is new not the act
While the term “big data” is relatively new, the act of gathering and storing large amounts of information for eventual analysis is ages old.
The concept gained momentum in the early 2000s when industry analyst Doug Laney articulated the now-mainstream definition of big data as the three Vs: volume, variety, velocity.
Dimensions of big data
1 . Volume
Organizations collect data from a variety of sources, including business transactions, social media and information from sensor or machine-to-machine data.
2 . Velocity
Data streams in at an unprecedented speed and must be dealt with in a timely manner. RFID tags, sensors and smart metering are driving the need to deal with torrents of data in near-real time.
3 . Variety
Data comes in all types of formats – from structured, numeric data in traditional databases to unstructured text documents, email, video, audio, stock ticker data and financial transactions.
4 . Variability
In addition to the increasing velocities and varieties of data, data flows can be highly inconsistent with periodic peaks.
5 . Complexity
Today’s data comes from multiple sources, which makes it difficult to link, match, cleanse and transform data across systems.
Standardization in Big data
Standardization in Big data is going to play a major role in facilitating the exchange and sharing huge volume of data across multiple platforms, multiple applications and multiple sectors.
With proper standardization in place, huge volume of data generated within a system can be effectively utilized by other systems/services and applications.
Significance of Big Data
In the recent past, the topic ‘Big data’ have gained significant popularity globally because of its capability to revolutionize the businesses and services. In fact, Big data has an impact on every aspect of our daily life.
The emerging technology areas like Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial intelligence, machine learning are fuelled by Big data and analytics only.
Advancements in big data analysis offer cost-effective opportunities to improve decision-making in critical development areas such as health care, employment, economic productivity, crime, security, and natural disaster and resource management.
The use and adoption of big data within governmental processes allows efficiencies in terms of cost, productivity, and innovation.
In India also Big data has become the major focus of scientists and technologists because of government’s new initiatives like ‘Digital India’.
