The Impact Of Big Data, And Why Do We Need It

The application of big data is crucial for competitive advantage. Big data can present an abundance of new growth opportunities by delivering internal insights and analyzing front-facing customer interactions.

Big data is a volume of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data whose size is beyond the capability of typical database processing applications to capture, store, manage and analyze. The three Vs which define big data are:

Big data challenges have become more common in recent years because of the growth in Web 2.0 technologies and mobile computing devices such as smartphones and tablets. Due to its massive size and complexity, most organizations are not able to handle this kind of information by using their current IT infrastructure.

With the growing trend towards large scale collection of Web content — including social media logs (for example Facebook or Twitter), Web clickstream (such as Google Analytics), geospatial information (such as cell phone GPS), among others — there is also a growing need for dealing with large amounts of data in various formats, which requires new technology skills and expertise.

This challenge can be addressed by using the available big data technologies that are emerging to make sense of massive volumes of raw data — ranging from private customer transaction histories captured from companies’ internal computer systems and external sources such as social media feeds or government databases, to video monitoring via CCTV and other sensor networks. A handful of early pioneers have already successfully deployed large-scale solutions to reap the benefits of big-data strategies.

Big Data has been widely recognized as a key differentiator in several industries-from healthcare, retail, banking, oil & gas, and telecommunications sectors.

Organizations are increasingly investing in analytics and business intelligence applications that support more granular, real-time access to data. This presents a number of challenges around information governance, storage capacity, and compliance with regulations. Unfortunately, traditional technologies cannot adapt fast enough to meet these demands, create new sources of value or satisfy the appetite for big data across an organization. Consequently, organizations that want to use big data effectively must consider innovative alternatives.

This is why big data is becoming a top priority for many organizations. It complements their existing investments in information technology, enables them to achieve a competitive advantage, and improves business intelligence. Their journey requires new skills, knowledge, infrastructure, and technologies. Ultimately, successful deployment of big data means aligning it with corporate strategy as well as identifying the right use case(s) that will generate measurable value for your organization today and into the future.

Originally published at https://protonautoml.com on June 16, 2021.