Status and future of Big Data in an industry. Part 1- Introduction

Below we present a few most popular points of view on the term “Big Data”.

The simplest definition

From the name it can be assumed that the term “big data” refers simply to the management and analysis of large amounts of data. According to the McKinsey Institute report “Big data: The next frontier for innovation,competition and productivity”, the term “big data” refers to data sets that exceed the capabilities of typical databases on entering, storing, managing and analyzing information. And the world data repositories continue to grow. In 2012 report of IDC's Digital Universe Study, sponsored by EMC, it was predicted that the total world volume of generated and replicated data in 2020 could be about 40 zettabytes (40 trillion gigabytes).

A more complex definition

However, “big data” imply more than simply analyzing huge amounts of information. The problem is not that organizations create huge amounts of data, but the fact that most of them are presented in a format that does not conform to the traditional structured format of the database (web logs, video recordings, text documents, machine code or, for example, geospatial data). All this is stored in a variety of different storage facilities, sometimes even outside the organization. As a result, corporations can have access to a huge amount of their data and do not have the necessary tools to establish relationships between these data and draw meaningful conclusions based on them. Also the data is being updated more and more, and traditional methods of analyzing information cannot keep up with the huge amount of constantly updated data, which ultimately opens the way for big data technologies.

The best definition

In essence, the concept of big data means working with information of a huge volume and a diverse composition, often updated and located in different sources in order to increase work efficiency, create new products and improve competitiveness. The term Big Data has following characteristics: volume, velocity, variety, veracity, value. Consulting company Forrester gives a brief formulation: “Big data unites techniques and technologies that extract meaning from data at the extreme limit of practicality”.

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