Big Data

Who uses Big Data?

Banking, Education, Government, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail.

Variability

In addition to the increasing velocities and varieties of data, data flows can be highly inconsistent with periodic peaks. Is something trending in social media? Daily, seasonal and event triggered peak data loads can be challenging to manage. Even more so with unstructured data.

Publicly available sources

Massive amounts of data are available through open data sources like the US government's data.gov, the CIA World Factbook or the European Union Open Data Portal.

Volume

Organizations collect data from a variety of sources, including business transactions, social media and information from sensor or machine to machine data. In the past, storing it would've been a problem but new technologies such as Hadoop have eased the burden.

The sources of big data generally fall into one of three categories

Streaming data, Social media data, and publicly available sources

Streaming data

This category includes data that reaches your IT systems from a web of connected devices. You can analyze this data as it arrives and make decisions on what data to keep, what not to keep and what requires further analysis.

Big Data

A term that describes the large volume of data - both structured and unstructured - that inundates a business on a day to day basis. But it's not the amount of data that's important. It's that organizations do with the data that matters. Big data can be analyzed for insights that lead to better decisions and strategic business moves.

Healthcare

Patient records. Treatment plans. Prescription information. When it comes to health care, everything needs to be done quickly, accurately - and, in some cases, with enough transparency to satisfy stringent industry regulations. When big data is managed effectively, health care providers can uncover hidden insights that improve patient care.

Social media data

The data on social interactions is an increasingly attractive set of information, particularly for marketing, sales and support functions. It's often in unstructured or semistructured forms, so it poses a unique challenge when it comes to consumption and analysis.

Why is Big Data important?

The importance of big data doesn't revolve around how much data you have, but what you do with it. You can take data from any source and analyze it to find answers that enable 1) cost reductions, 2) time reductions, 3) new product development and optimized offerings, and 4) smart decision making.

Complexity

Today's data comes from multiple sources, which makes it difficult to link, match, cleanse and transform data across systems. However, it's necessary to connect and correlate relationships, hierarchies and multiple data linkages or your data can quickly spiral out of control.

Two additional dimensions of big data

Variability and Complexity

When you combine big data with high-powered analytics, you can accomplish business-related tasks such as:

1. Determining root causes of failures, issues and defects in near-real time. 2. Generating coupons at the point of sale based on the customer's buying habits. 3. Recalculating entire risk portfolios in minutes. 4. Detecting fraudulent behavior before it affects your organization.

Manufacturing

Armed with insight that big data can provide, manufacturers can boost quality and output while minimizing waste - processes that are key in today's highly competitive market. More and more manufacturers are working in an analytics-based culture, which means they can solve problems faster and make more agile business decisions.

Retail

Customer relationship building is critical to the retail industry - and the best way to manage that is to manage big data. Retailers need to know the best way to market to customers, the most effective way to handle transactions, and the most strategic way to bring back lapsed business. Big data remains at the heart of all those things.

Education

Educators armed with data-driven insight can make a significant impact on school systems, students and curriculums. By analyzing big data, they can identify at-risk students, make sure students are making adequate progress, and can implement a better system for evaluation and support of teachers and principals.

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.

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.

Big data is defined by the three V's

Volume, Velocity, and Variety.

Government

When government agencies are able to harness and apply analytics to their big data, they gain significant ground when it comes to managing utilities, running agencies, dealing with traffic congestion or preventing crime. But while there are many advantages to big data, governments must also address issues of transparency and privacy.

Banking

With large amounts of information streaming in from countless sources, banks are faced with finding new and innovative ways to manage big data. While it's important to understand customers and boost their satisfaction, it's equally important to minimize risk and fraud while maintaining regulatory compliance. Big data brings big insights, but it also requires financial institutions to stay one step ahead of the game with advanced analytics.