What is Big Data

What is Big Data?

The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets—so-called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus.

The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future.

Examples :

Walmart handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour, which is imported into databases estimated to contain more than 2.5 petabytes of data – the equivalent of 167 times the information contained in all the books in the US Library of Congress.

Facebook handles 40 billion photos from its user base.

FICO Falcon Credit Card Fraud Detection System protects 2.1 billion active accounts world-wide.

The volume of business data worldwide, across all companies, doubles every 1.2 years, according to estimates

Facts:

1. Data have swept into every industry and business function and are now an important factor of production, alongside labor and capital

2. Analytics can substantially improve decision-making   and forcasting.

3. The use of big data will become a key basis of competition and growth for individual firms

5.The use of big data will underpin new waves of productivity growth and consumer surplus

6. There will be a shortage of talent necessary for organizations to take advantage of big data.

7. Several issues will have to be addressed to capture the full potential of big data. Policies related to privacy, security, intellectual property, and even liability will need to be addressed in a big data world.

8. Companies will increasingly need to integrate information from multiple data sources, often from third parties

Big Data technologies

Sources
Big Data on Wikipedia
Mckinsey