I too was surprised when I came to know about this fact. To qualify for Big Data, as a business you must be dealing with 100 TB or more data.
There are two types of data in this world.
- Structured Data
- Unstructured Data
Structured data are those which are organized in a controlled way. This data is identifiable, easily accessible. The data is organized in columns and rows. The Databases, ERP system that we deal with in daily life are example of repositories which stores the structured data. In a nutshell, the data which is there in the databases are structured data.
Unstructured Data are those which are not easily identifiable. The unstructured data do not have a data model to apply. This data can be in textual or non-textual format. This data cannot be stored in the relational databases because of it nature – i.e this data has ambiguities, complexity and irregularities.
Why I am telling you this? The point I want to make here is that data is growing at a much higher rate than we imagine. Do you know the entire world is creating 8 TB data every day? The 80 percent of this data is unstructured. This unstructured data is coming from a lot of sources – social media (facebook, twitter, google plus, youtube etc.), videos, audios, web logs, machine generated logs, sensors and many more. The unstructured data is coming in the form of messages, emails, presentations, PDF, links, videos, audio, visuals etc. Today, we have more devices (Smartphones, PDAs, iPAD, iPhone, Tablets etc) which are generating data every day. Most of this data is unstructured but contains a lot of information.
Today more than 2 billion people across the world is using internet and contributing to the growth of unstructured data. As per internet world statistics at the end of year 2011, total 2,267,233,742 people are using internet. The point I want to make here is that data is growing and it is growing every second. A big proportion of this data is unused. This data contains useful information. This data has many business insights into it.
Today, the available tools of Data management are not good fit to take this wave of ever growing data heads on and gives business the ability of to search, share and analyze this much data for their business needs.
Big Data is not a single tool or platform. Big Data is a strategy to store all these data (structured + unstructured) and ability to generate useful information, meaningful pattern out of it by analyzing this data. This information comes handy to corporate in making good, smart and profit driven business decisions.
Who has the "Big Data"?
Looking at the size of Big Data qualification, we can easily understand that not every company, business or organization has big data. The SME (Small Medium Enterprise) do not have that much data. So who has this much data available to care for Big Data.
Mainly Telecom, Banks, Insurance, Mobile and some FMCG companies like Wal-Mart has data which can be classified as Big Data. For example, Wal-Mart has 2.5 petabytes of data and this is growing every day. Some of the big guns in these industries are using big data from years.
What are the benefits of Big Data?
Big Data trend is evolving. Big Data will provide smart storage of large and hefty data; its quick and predictive analysis will provide insight to corporate what is going to happen in future. This will improve the company efficiency to come out with smart and great business ideas in future.
The solution to apply Big Data strategy is not cheap – it involves cost. In a very simple term, with Big Data you are dealing with huge wave of data which is generating new wave of data every minute and second. Today, the availability of Cloud and data centers have made the storage of large and hefty data affordable but the real challenge lies in analyzing this data and come up with useful patterns which can add value to the business.
Big Data tools and technologies are still in evaluating stage. Although IT big guys like IBM and Oracle are ready to offer Big Data suite of products from their armors. To apply Big Data as a business you needs a very strong understanding of your business, the outcome you want to achieve with Big Data and you should be ready for cost.
The Big Data wave is so complex and hefty that you can easy lost in this wave. So before you raise your hand to Big Data, think smartly, thoughtfully why do you need this?
We will analyze the Big Data tools and technologies in future post. Thanks for reading till this point
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