Latest Technology Trend - Big Data

This post like my earlier post is aimed for people who want to understand Big Data but most of the articles available on the internet is too Vast and Technical. I believe Big Data is the latest Technology Trend. In my earlier post, I wrote about Cloud Technology. My aim here is not to talk too technical and to help people understand how these technological changes can bring about a change in their life or more practically, in the World we all live in.

I believe it’s time everyone should know and understand what Big Data is, what it can do and how you as an individual or as enterprise should use it or at least know it.

Why you have to understand Big Data?

According to IDC, The market of Big Data will grow at a 26.4 % compound annual growth rate to 41.5 billion through 2018. We all know 2018 is not far, so you can expect the Big Data services/technology to knock the doors of your company (if not knocked already) any time soon. If you are a Technical person, you might well want to pursue a career in the field of Big Data as there is a shortage of 200,000 alone in the States according to McKinsey. Why do we have data of the shortage of employees in States, It’s because only they calculated it, this is an example of a whole country taking a Technological advancing step. This number will grow as more and more companies are adapting to the changes towards the possibility of improvements that Big Data and Analytic has to offer.

Don’t get carried away with the name “Big Data”. It’s nothing new. Data was always there, it’s just with these technological advancements as such Social media and other data generating platforms the data we generate today is vast and hence the name BIG DATA. We live in a world where we generate 2.5 billion gigabytes (GB) data everyday and we can only utilise it if we know what needs to be done with it.

Now you might be wondering how we generate this amount of data. I will provide you a very simple example, you have your locations services enabled on your iPhone so you generate Location based Data, what it signifies is you generate data based on the locations. Big Data is part of your Daily life. If you think this Data is not getting collected then how do you think the National Security Agency's massive surveillance programs that were exposed by former contractor Edward Snowden a year ago was collecting data. In internal documents, the agency crowed about the scope of its mission, which was encapsulated in one phrase: "Collect it all." Who owns this data, has access to it, is unregulated.

Now as you got an idea of what actually is Big Data, I will tell you the sources of Big Data. The acceptance of the source varies with the companies using them. Prominently it includes data generated from transactions, log data, events, emails, social media, geospatial, sensors, external feeds, audio, video, location based (geographical).

Let’s think about Use of Big Data. What do you think? How can this whole big data thing be profitable?

Of course yes, do you know Mr. Barack Obama won his both the presidential elections with the help and use of Big Data? And it’s not me who says this, this has been validated and was written in MIT review & WSJ (Wall Street Journal). A political party in India won the election using Big Data. I used the example of Elections here as we all are aware of the presidential elections. The use of Big Data is never ending. I believe in the coming years we would have applications and services which we can use to implement Big Data in our day to day life.  We can’t always be the Source.

Cheers for now! My next Technology trend topic will be “Virtual Reality”.