BigDataScalability.com – The data generated by millions of devices play a significant role in a digital revolution. It is the reason want to know about what is big data. Although this term raises in popularity, many people are still unfamiliar with it. Learning about big data helps you to know the current changing in society, people, and the economy.
Now, nearly 6500 million devices are connected to the internet and share information over there. This number will keep increasing each year. Its role is to analyze this large amount of data. Then, convert it into more important information depending on the specific field. It is useful to decide the next suitable actions.
Table of Contents
What is Big Data and its Application?
It is important to know about big data definition and its applications if you want to work with it effectively. Here is essential information that helps you to understand this term.
1. Definition of Big Data
Big data refers to a collection of data in massive volumes. It develops exponentially over time making it comes in a large size. It also has complexity because it consists of structured data, unstructured data, and semi-structured data from various sources. It is why traditional data management tools cannot process it.
Not just how big the data is, what organizations do with data matters more. Organizations tend to collect big data on daily basis to infer important information that they can use in machine learning projects. They also can use it to predict suitable models and apply advanced analytics.
The quantity of big data that organizations need does not refer to a specific volume. Instead, organizations likely sum it up using a unit of measurement. Hence, it will be more familiar for us to discover big data gathered over time in petabytes, terabytes, and exabytes.
What is big data affects the ways organizations manage and take insights from it. It changes the way how companies and organizations use a large amount of information to improve themselves. There is a potential for every industry to unlock hidden insights behind big data and achieve better improvements.
2. The Importance of Big Data
Big data helps companies to improve their marketing, customer service, team management, and regular operations. By analyzing the data, they can innovate new products and find solutions for any problems faced. Big data makes them well-informed and create great decisions for better results.
Brands usually use big data to improve profits and become the leader in the market for particular segments. It proves that big data gives advantages to companies by making them more competitive over their rivals. It is because not all companies today realize the importance of using big data.
The importance of big data is not simply on how much you have gathered. Rather, its value lies in how you use it. By collecting data from various sources, you can analyze it and find solutions for your companies. For instance, you will know the opportunities facing ahead so you can start to make strategies.
Aside from what is big data, analyzing it allows you to determine the causes of failures. Sometimes companies experience failures in their services or defects in their products. Examining big data helps companies to discover potential causes that lead to this condition.
3. Examples of Big Data
If you want to understand more about what is big data and examples, here is information that can help you.
Trading Platform
You can take an example of big data from a trading platform like The New York Stock Exchange. This platform produces around one terabyte of new trading data each day.
As one of the biggest trading platforms worldwide, it is not surprising that it generates massive amounts of data. It has the largest user around the world.
Social Media
We can take a look at an example of what is big data from a social media platform. Facebook has around 500 terabytes of new data in its databases each day. This data comes from activities its users do. Most of the data on this platform consists of photos, videos, messages, and comments.
Machine
Another example of big data is from a machine like a jet engine. It can generate around 10 terabytes of data during 30 minutes of flight time. If this jet goes through thousand flights in a day, the data collection might come in petabytes.
4. The Use of Big Data
Defining what is big data and its benefits helps to address business activities. It is beneficial from gathering customer experience to conducting analytics. Here are several uses of big data in companies or organizations.
Predictive maintenance
Structured data often covers fixed information including year, make, and equipment model, and so on. Meanwhile, unstructured data comprises millions of log entries, engine temperature, sensor data, and error messages. Both of them may contain factors that can help predict mechanical failures.
Using this data, companies can predict indications of potential issues. Hence, they can make some preventions before the problems occurred. Besides, organizations can conduct more affordable maintenance as well as optimize parts and equipment uptime.
Customer experience
Companies compete to meet customers’ satisfaction. Through what is big data, companies can have a clear view of their customer experience than ever before. Big data allows them to collect data from different web visits, call logs, social media, and other sources.
It helps them to improve the interaction with the customers and maximize the value that customers receive. The information inferred from the data enables companies to reduce customer churn. It helps them to handle various issues effectively and start providing customized offers.
Product development
Many companies like Netflix maximize big data to predict customer demand. They create predictive models for future products and services using the data. They classify the main attributes of previous and current products. Then, they make a model about the relationship between those attributes and the new offerings.
Another company, Procter & Gamble uses big data and analytics from various groups to plan, produce, and launch new products. Among a variety of sources that this company uses are social media, focus groups, test markets, and initial store rollouts. This process allows them to gather the required information.
Operational Efficiency
Operational efficiency perhaps is not always in the top use but it shows an application of what is big data. It is an area in which big data make the most impact on companies. By using the data for analysis, companies can assess their production.
They will know feedback and returns from customers which is useful for evaluation. The data gives the necessary information for companies about factors that reduce outages and predict future demands. Big data is also beneficial for decision-making.
Hence, companies can improve their offerings and solutions based on current market demand. Companies start using big data tools to conduct automated tasks and regular processes in the companies.
It saves more human sources and time. Hence, companies can relocate employees to other tasks that require more cognitive skills.
Fraud and compliance
What is big data also plays an important role in security. One of the biggest challenges in the current industry is how to fight hackers. It is because almost all business processes are connected with internet networking. It automatically increases fraud possibilities.
Security and compliance requirements are continually developing. Big data is powerful to identify patterns hidden in the data sources. It helps to indicate fraud and aggregate a large volume of information. Hence, companies can make the regulatory report much quicker than before.
Machine learning
Machine learning becomes a hot topic in numerous fields currently. Aside from what is big data, its application is also the reason behind its popularity. Big data shifts from programming the machines to teaching the machines.
The availability of big data to teach machine learning models makes this condition possible. By making a learning model for machines, they can deliver tasks automatically. It enables companies to save energy, time, and many resources.
It reduces human interference during work too. Hence, the machine can produce precise results in the given time.
Drive innovation
Big data helps companies to make innovations by observing many factors such as interdependencies between humans, companies, and institutions. Then, they use the data to process and decide the new ways to use those insights.
Through what is big data, they can gain insights to improve decision-making in the financial sector. Those insights are useful to consider the plans to develop the operations. Companies can observe trends and customers’ preferences when they want to launch new products or services.
It allows the companies to implement dynamic pricing since big data keep connecting the companies with market trends. There are always countless possibilities that are available when you work with big data.
Since a large quantity of data generates every day, it is important to always keep up to date with that information. Hence, any company can be more dynamic with changes that happen in the markets and world.
5. Challenges on Big Data
Perhaps there are a lot of promises behind what is big data. However, it does not mean that there are no challenges when working with it. First, since it has a large size and keeps growing exponentially over time, companies will be difficult to keep up with the pace. It will be a problem to store that large data effectively.
Companies have to anticipate this challenge although new technologies for data storage are available now. The challenge is not only about data storage but also data usage. The curation will affect the value of the data. It requires extra effort to take and organize data so companies can conduct meaningful analyses.
For instance, data scientists likely spend around 50 to 80 percent of their time curating and preparing the data so it is ready to use. Through this long process, what is big data is not as simple as people think. Not just the size of the data that keep evolving but its rapid change is also challenging.
When companies or organizations are not using big data, they will become obsolete. It is because they do not know what is happening in the current world. They have no idea what most people now like. These rapid changes make information that is very important a few years ago now become expired and irrelevant.
Aside from what is big data in this modern industry, it matters and becomes the backbone of every business. Analyzing big data helps companies to plan growth strategies that can be effective for their present and future. It is essential to observe customer needs and market trends.
The main dynamics of big data are not only about data engagement considerations. The bigger challenge is to identify trustworthy ways to improve data production in the following years. Therefore, more companies and organizations can gain broader and more reliable insights for their development in the future.
Read More:
