big data

What is and what is its importance?

Big data is a term that describes the large amount of data - both structured and unstructured - that impact companies on a daily basis. But it is not the amount of data available that matters; is what organizations do with them. Big data can be analyzed for insights that lead to better decisions and strategic business actions.

History     Importance

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Current Big Data History and Considerations

Although the term "big data" is relatively new, the act of collecting and storing large amounts of information for eventual analysis is very old. The concept gained momentum in the early 2000s when analyst Doug Laney articulated the [now mainstream] definition of the big date into three Vs:

Volume.  Organizations collect data from a variety of sources, including financial transactions, social networks, and information from sensors or data transmitted from machine to machine. In the past, storing them would have been a problem - but new technologies (such as Hadoop ) have alleviated this burden.

Velocity.  Data is transmitted at an unprecedented rate and must be handled in a timely manner. RFID tags, sensors and smart metering are driving the need to deal with data streams virtually in real time.

Variety.  Data are generated in many formats - from structured (numerical, in traditional databases) to unstructured (text documents, e-mail, video, audio, stock quotes and financial transactions).

In SAS, we consider two additional dimensions when talking about big data:

Variability.  In addition to the increasing speed and variety of data, their flows may be highly inconsistent with periodic peaks. What is the latest trend in social networks? Every day, seasonal or event-generated data peaks can be difficult to manage, especially with unstructured data.

Complexity.  Today's data comes from multiple sources, making it difficult to link, match, clean, and transform between systems. However, you need to connect and correlate relationships, hierarchies, and multiple bindings, or you can quickly lose control over your data.

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The big potential of the big data

The amount of data created and stored globally is almost unimaginable and just continues to grow. This means that there is even more potential to extract important insights from this information - although only a small percentage of data is actually analyzed. What does this mean for companies? How can they make better use of that raw information that flows into their walls every day?

How important is the big data?

The importance of the big date does not revolve around the amount of data available to you, but of what you do with that data. You can get data from multiple sources and analyze them to find answers that allow 1) reduce costs; 2) save time; 3) develop new products and optimize offers; 4) make smarter decisions. When you combine big data with high-powered analytics , you can accomplish corporate tasks like:

Determine the roots of faults, problems and defects almost in real time;

Generate coupons at the points of sale, from the customers' buying habits;

Recalculate complete risk portfolios in minutes;

Detect fraudulent behavior before it affects your organization.