Big Data

Big Data

The term Big Data is being increasingly used almost everywhere on the planet – online and offline. And it is not related to computers only. It comes under a blanket term called Information Technology, which is now part of almost all other technologies and fields of studies and businesses. Big Data is not a big deal. The hype surrounding it is sure pretty big deal to confuse you. This article takes a look at what is Big Data. It also contains an example on how NetFlix used its data, or rather, Big Data, to better serve its clients’ needs.

What is Big Data

The data lying in the servers of your company was just data until yesterday – sorted and filed. Suddenly, the slang Big Data got popular and now the data in your company is Big Data. The term covers each and every piece of data your organization has stored till now. It includes data stored in clouds and even the URLs that you bookmarked. Your company might not have digitized all the data. You may not have structured all the data already. But then, all the digital, papers, structured and non-structured data with your company is now Big Data.

In short, all the data – whether or not categorized – present in your servers is collectively called BIG DATA. All this data can be used to get different results using different types of analysis. It is not necessary that that all analysis use all the data. Different analysis uses different parts of the BIG
DATA to produce the results and predictions necessary.

Big Data is essentially the data that you analyze for results that you can use for predictions and for other uses. When using the term Big Data, suddenly your company or organization is working with top level Information technology to deduce different types of results using the same data that you stored intentionally or unintentionally over years.

How big is Big Data

Essentially, all the data combined is Big Data but many researchers agree that Big Data – as such – cannot be manipulated using normal spreadsheets and regular tools of database management. They need special analysis tools like Hadoop (we’ll study this in a separate post) so that all the data can be analyzed at one go (may include iterations of analysis).
Contrary to the above, though I am not an expert on the subject, I would say that data with any organization – big or small, organized or unorganized – is Big Data for that organization and that the organization may choose its own tools to analyze the data.

Big Data Concepts

This is another point where most people don’t agree. Some experts say that the Big Data Concepts are three Vs:
1.Volume
2.Velocity
3.Variety
Some others add few more Vs to the concept:
4.Visualization
5.Veracity (Reliability)
6.Variability and
7.Value

What are the Uses of Big Data

Business houses have long been dependent on whatever data they had to analyze trends, behavior (of goods and/or users), impacts and overall profits, etc. With the kind of data they now possess – thanks to the Internet – the computing goes beyond simple spreadsheets to provide them with much accurate results. Furthermore, Big Data enables them to perform more kinds of analysis to keep it a healthy and profitable business that is always on a path to growth.

Big Data Consumption

Industries Already Using Big Data: They Started Early

A] Financial Institutions: Mainly dealing with your money, these industries rely on Big Data to check previous trends and make predictions. Early data was less so predictions came with a bigger margin of risk. That risk is now reduced due to access to more data. Share markets, banks and other financial institutions may also be checking your spending methods to derive some sort of equation that helps you retain maximum profits. The following chart will assist you in understanding how financial institutions use Big Data. It will also give you an idea of how Big Data can be used.

B] Retail Marketing: The first thing that strikes mind talking about retail is the consumption of goods – area-wise or age-wise. Yes, you can use Big Data to tell how and who are using your goods and what types of goods. More than that, you can also focus on improving products and even introducing new products based on the ones that are succeeding. The other side of using Big Data in Retail Marketing is figuring out prospects (don’t forget the online window shoppers), prospect to client conversion rate and abilities or techniques, client retention and similar areas.

C] Government and Public Sector: How can we forget the government when it comes to data? Govt. and public sector units are ones that collect data more than any other sector. You can say they are drowning in data even as they digitize and store the data onto their servers or clouds worldwide. According to a whitepaper by IDC
“As government leaders across the spectrum strive to become a data-driven organization to successfully accomplish their missions, they are laying the groundwork to correlate dependencies across events and track dependencies across people, processes, and information.”
Overall, this sector gains in terms of productivity as it can track the speed + accuracy of different projects being run by them. It can then analyze the data to find of better methods of improving performance. There are quite a few other benefits too such as tracking people for serving them better healthcare, employment etc.

D] Communications Sector: Another area where Big Data plays an important role from acquisition of customers to enhancing or at the least, maintaining the class of service being provided to them, recovery and bad debts too!
Since they would want their services always up and running, they can use Big Data both for the above and into their own infrastructure to project potential growth as years go by. They come to know the requirements of bandwidth, they would know about fake customers and customers no longer using their services (helps in bringing them back), risk mitigation in case ofsudden increase in demand and much more – virtually any part of the business you can think of.

E] Media and Entertainment Businesses: The main focus here is customer retention – sometimes more important compared to customer acquisition. Big Data at hand helps in checking out what kind of media different users enjoy and based on that, the media houses develop better content of that type.
They focus on age-groups and dividing the production of artifacts according to the analysis results. At the same time, they have to find out what kind of advertising do the different age groups engage with – instead of simply watching. Earlier, it was not possible to get that much data but due to Internet Marketing Agencies and compilation of data over years instead of just flushing it, they can make real-time decisions, take appropriate actions for both customers and staff. It is just the beginning. There are no limits on what all you wish to know. With the right kind of data in hand, you can always get accurate results.