What is known as Big Data?

To really understand big data, it’s helpful to have some historical background. Here’s Gartner’s definition, Big data is data that contains greater variety arriving in increasing volumes and with ever-higher velocity. This is known as the three Vs.

Put simply, big data is larger, more complex data sets, especially from new data sources. These data sets are so voluminous that traditional data processing software just can’t manage them. But these massive volumes of data can be used to address business problems you wouldn’t have been able to tackle before.

The Three Vs of Big Data

1. Volume  

The amount of data matters. With big data, you’ll have to process high volumes of low-density, unstructured data. This can be data of unknown value, such as Twitter data feeds, clickstreams on a webpage or a mobile app, or sensor-enabled equipment. For some organizations, this might be tens of terabytes of data. For others, it may be hundreds of petabytes.

2. Velocity 

Velocity is the fast rate at which data is received and (perhaps) acted on. Normally, the highest velocity of data streams directly into memory versus being written to disk. Some internet-enabled smart products operate in real time or near real time and will require real-time evaluation and action.

3. Variety 

Variety refers to the many types of data that are available. Traditional data types were structured and fit neatly in a relational database. With the rise of big data, data comes in new unstructured data types. Unstructured and semi-structured data types, such as text, audio, and video require additional pre-processing to derive meaning and support metadata.

The History of Big Data

Although the concept of big data itself is relatively new, the origins of large data sets go back to the 1960s and '70s when the world of data was just getting started, with the first data centers and the development of the relational database. Around 2005, people began to realize just how much data users generated through Facebook, YouTube, and other online services. Hadoop (an open-source framework created specifically to store and analyze big data sets) was developed that same year. NoSQL also began to gain popularity during this time.

The development of open-source frameworks, such as Hadoop (and more recently, Spark) was essential for the growth of big data because they make big data easier to work with and cheaper to store. In the years since then, the volume of big data has skyrocketed. Users are still generating huge amounts of data—but it’s not just humans who are doing it. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), more objects and devices are connected to the internet, gathering data on customer usage patterns and product performance. The emergence of machine learning has produced still more data.

While big data has come far, its usefulness is only just beginning. Cloud computing has expanded big data possibilities even further. The cloud offers truly elastic scalability, where developers can simply spin up ad hoc clusters to test a subset of data.

Benefits of Big Data and Data Analytics:

• Big data makes it possible for you to gain more complete answers because you have more information.

• More complete answers mean more confidence in the data—which means a completely different approach to tackling problems.

Big data use cases

Big data can help you address a range of business activities, from customer experience to analytics. Here are just a few. 

• Product Development 

Companies like Netflix and Procter & Gamble use big data to anticipate customer demand. They build predictive models for new products and services by classifying key attributes of past and current products or services and modelling the relationship between those attributes and the commercial success of the offerings. In addition, P&G uses data and analytics from focus groups, social media, test markets, and early store rollouts to plan, produce, and launch new products.

• Predictive Maintenance 

Factors that can predict mechanical failures may be deeply buried in structured data, such as the equipment year, make, and model of a machine, as well as in unstructured data that covers millions of log entries, sensor data, error messages, and engine temperature. By analyzing these indications of potential issues before the problems happen, organizations can deploy maintenance more cost effectively and maximize parts and equipment uptime.

• Customer Experience 

The race for customers is on. A clearer view of customer experience is more possible now than ever before. Big data enables you to gather data from social media, web visits, call logs, and other data sources to improve the interaction experience and maximize the value delivered. Start delivering personalized offers, reduce customer churn, and handle issues proactively.

• Fraud and Compliance 

When it comes to security, it’s not just a few rogue hackers; you’re up against entire expert teams. Security landscapes and compliance requirements are constantly evolving. Big data helps you identify patterns in data that indicate fraud and aggregate large volumes of information to make regulatory reporting much faster.

• Machine Learning 

Machine learning is a hot topic right now. And data—specifically big data—is one of the reasons why. We are now able to teach machines instead of program them. The availability of big data to train machine-learning models makes that happen.

• Operational Efficiency 

Operational efficiency may not always make the news, but it’s an area in which big data is having the most impact. With big data, you can analyze and assess production, customer feedback and returns, and other factors to reduce outages and anticipate future demands. Big data can also be used to improve decision-making in line with current market demand.

• Drive Innovation 

Big data can help you innovate by studying interdependencies between humans, institutions, entities, and process and then determining new ways to use those insights. Use data insights to improve decisions about financial and planning considerations. Examine trends and what customers want to deliver new products and services. Implement dynamic pricing. There are endless possibilities.