The world is increasing becoming a data space with more and more data being generated every day. One research says, every day users upload 55 million pictures, 340 million tweets and 1 billion documents, which in total counts to 2.5 quintillion data. Yep, you read that right!
Now the question is how do we manage this much data when traditional data processing applications are inadequate for the same. The ever intensifying data creation has given rise to a new technique, to which we call Big Data. It’s simply a newer technique to store, manage and share loads of data value. Big data gained its momentum in early 2000s, however, its significance is booming in the present scenario. For the uninitiated, its encompasses three Vs- Volume, Velocity and Variety.
- Volume: Data is collected from several source such as business transactions, social media, machine-to-machine data and other sources. Together, it turns into huge data collection, which is managed via new technologies such as Hadoop. It’s an open source software that allows processing of lager set of data in a distributed computing environment. In other words, Hadoop lets you seamlessly store and manage tons of data, in a fraction of time.
- Velocity: It’s the velocity rate at which data is received/collected and acted upon. Search Cloud Computing says, “Every big data analytics project will ingest, correlate and analyze the data sources, and then render an answer or result based on an overarching query. This means human analysts must have a detailed understanding of the available data and possess some sense of what answer they’re looking for.” Henceforth, it comprehends near real time and real-time data analyses for appropriate data streaming.
- Variety: Data, typically, comes in variety of forms such as structured and unstructured data, which further include numeric data in traditional database and documents, emails, audio, video, financial transactions and stock ticker data, respectively. While structured data doesn’t require any prerequisites to process, unstructured data would. It needs symmetric structuring to get processed.
These Vs comprise to the traditional definition of Big data. However, modern research has added additional Vs to it, which are:
- Veracity: Veracity in data refers to the meaningfulness of the data. In other words, biases, noise and abnormality in data. While data values are bombarded, not all of it is significant. Data should be filtered at the stage of amassing and analyzing it for further streaming. Apparently, data sifting requires a concrete team and partners and ensured only valuable information is processed while the unimportant one is ignore.
- Validity: Data validity is another aspect of Big data. Similar to data veracity, validity also plays a crucial role. It refers to the correctness and accuracy of the data for the intended use. Once filtered, it is further analyzed and processed.
- Volatility: Big data volatility refers to the validity of the data in terms of time and usefulness. This aspect includes variants like how long is data valid and how long should it be stored.
- Variability: Variability refers to the data whose meaning is constantly changing. More often, this happens with the data which surfaces at a particular time such as trends on social media or information pertaining to a time spans. This sort of data is analyzed and processed with reference to its importance.
How Big Data has changed the scenario over the time and its impact
The ever increasing data collection makes it invariable for organizations to adopt big data technique. Currently, big data has led to certain specific changes. Apparently, we also happen to call these changes as the time and age of technology.
- Social Networks/Media: Social networking via its several mediums have become the mainstream thing in present time. Billions of people relay on social media to connect with people all around, to spread a word- business, advertising and exchanges, etc. Henceforth, immense data is generated via social media and its networks and are a manifestation of big data.
- Data Source- Public/Open Data: Many of the private and public organizations have made much data available for users to read or use, unlike the preceding times. More often, this information is ingredient with regional and national data, data related economic activities, information on public services, on demographic or environmental phenomena, info-mobility and transport.
- Internet of Things: Every product and element of the time involves miniaturization of electronics and pervasive, mobile, and “ubiquitous” connection capabilities, which makes things to be digitally controlled. For example, cars and other domestic products are in some way centered around internet and technology. Further, Ingenium Magazine says, “Every part of our environment can be “enriched” to collect data and information on natural phenomena (e.g. landslides, climatic variations, natural phenomena) both behavioral and social phenomena (such as traffic, people flows in urban regions, safety levels and community monitoring). Every sphere of today’s world can be digitized and, as such, become an almost unlimited source of data and information.”
- Internet, Web, e-Commerce and Apps: Information generated today is more specifically available on the internet/web or up surging apps. While forming in the part of big data, internet/web, e-Commerce and apps can’t be ignored. These are areas users generally depend on when it comes to data usage.
Impact of Big Data
With big data changing the scenario, certain industries have had major impact on them. Some of these impacts are listed below, as per the industry.
- Impact on Marketing: When marketing is concerned, big data helps have a better consumer engagement, their retention and loyalty and come up with optimum output/performance out of marketing strategies. It would be no exaggeration to say, big data has changed the marketing scenario inside out.
Image Source: forbes.com
- Impact on Businesses: Kristina Roth, CEO & Founder of Matisia Consultants says, “with big data, businesses can learn to improve faster, better, and at lower costs by learning lessons from each improvement project and incorporating them into the next project.” In addition, it has helped organization keep their data safe and secure. One of the survey has unleashed the following aspects.
- 64% of IT companies are heavily investing in big data.
- 69% of respondents ‘confirmed that big data is crucial and high priority.
- 75% of CIOs have revealed that big has positively impacted their productivity and overall efficiency.
- 70% of participants have revealed that their businesses have seen a positive impact on account of their big data investment
- Impact on Society: Amongst everything else, big data has impacted everyday life and society as well. For more clarity, we can observe newer technologies that are making life easier with intelligence, such as self-driven cars that are navigated all through inti-tech. In the near future problems will be solved even before they’ll surface. Intelligent apps and gadgets are also likely to swap the existing ones.
In addition to all these, big data also has a huge impact on medical, social media marketing, advertising, other aspects of economy.
Also Read : 13 Commercial Data Extraction Tools of Big Datalso:
Future Prospects of Big Data
Having said all this, more and more companies will adopt big data in the near time. Further, researchers have also pinned various prospects of big data in future. Here are some of these:
- A shift from operational to analytical: While the existing technology has helped operations of data streaming, the upcoming will be more inclined towards analyzing the data across domains they are capturing it. In other words, real-time streaming will be the future aspect of big data.
- Privacy will be a challenge: When data growth is ever intensifying without a stoppage, privacy will be a challenge for this budding technique. This will more in industries like banking, social media, and alike, where user information is required and plays crucial role.
- Businesses will see huge benefits from it: As discussed above, businesses are getting benefitted from big data. This will be even more in the future. Enhanced optimization and productivity will be the key benefits. More specifically, businesses are expected to see 430$ billion as productivity benefit.
If there is any big technology that we are now looking upon, couldn’t any else than big data, which is all set to amass huge data being created. With that been said, big data will get better with time and revolutionize the world for better.