Before coming to explain the concept and the meaning of big data, let us start by learning what data actually is. Data is basically different quantities, characters, or symbols through which one can perform operations on your computer. This data is stored and transferred in the form of electric signals. The data is recorded on the magnetic, optical, or mechanical recording media. This article is about All About Big Data And Its Importance In Businesses Today.
What is Big Data?
Now coming to the big data part, it is data that contains a greater variety of data, complex data sets, with more volume and velocity. This huge data in volume keeps on growing exponentially with time. Moreover, the volume of big data is so large that all the traditional data management tools are unable and inefficient in handling it.
If you are thinking of examples regarding big data, then the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is the perfect example of big data. It generates around 1 TB of new trade data every day, hence the term big data. Another mainstream example of big data that is present in our everyday lives is social media.
According to the statistics, around 500 TB of new data is ingested almost every day into the databases of social media apps like Facebook. And where does this big data is generated from, you might wonder. This big data on social media is created through the photos and videos uploaded on it, putting comments, leaving likes, message exchanges, etc.
Kinds of Big Data
Big data is divided into three types, namely:
1. Structured big data
Any type of data that can be stored, processed, and accessed in any fixed structured type of format is called big data.
2. Unstructured big data
The data that has an unstructured form and kind is termed unstructured big data. To simplify, the unstructured data consists of a heterogeneous data source that has a combination of different files.
3. Semi-structured data
In this, the data can contain both the forms: the unstructured big data and the structured big data. One such example of semi-structured data is the XML file.
The Three Vs of the Big Data
Big data can be described by its three essential characteristics that are popularly known as:
1. Volume
The most defining feature of big data is its immense volume. The amount of data is a defining force with which you have to process high volumes of low-density and unstructured data which can be of any unknown value. So if you wonder if a piece of any data is big data or not, look at its volume because that is what defines it.
2. Velocity
The second defining factor of big data is its velocity which is the fast rate at which the data is received or the speed at which data is generated. Usually, the highest data velocity streams directly into the memory against written to the disk. Thus, the big data velocity flows massively and continuously.
3. Variety
The next defining character of big data is its variety which refers to the types of data that are available. Traditionally, the only data type to be seen was structured data but with the rise in technology, the data types later were further divided into semi-structured and unstructured data types too.
What is Big Data Analytics? Why is it Important?
Another complex big data definition is about big data analytics and how important it is to business. Big data analytics refers to the method of using advanced techniques for a large volume of data that consists of all data types: structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data and with different sizes.
Although big data analytics brings speed and efficiency traditionally. But with the recent advancement in technology, organizations, companies, and big data engineers have been using big data analytics to gather information, make future decisions, gather insights, and also make immediate decisions. Therefore, if you see closely, business analytics play a major role in the working of every business.
Importance of Data Analytics Today
We learned how businesses use big data analytics to harness their data into finding new opportunities for their businesses. Here are the three major ways in which big data analytics help businesses:
- Big data analysts help in faster and accurate decision making with the hello analyzing new sources of data and information that is important for the business.
- Big data technologies also help in bringing a significant change in the cost that comes in storing big data.
- With the help of big data analytics, companies are also able to gauge customer needs and satisfaction.
This is the importance of big data and the role of big data analytics in today’s businesses.
Latest Articles