Big Data refers to data sets or combinations of data sets whose size (volume), complexity (variability) and speed of growth (velocity) make it difficult to capture, manage, process or analyze them using conventional technologies and tools. The complex nature of Big Data is primarily due to the unstructured nature of much of the data generated by modern technologies. In most cases, in order to use Big Data efficiently, it must be combined with structured data (usually from a relational database) from a more conventional business application, such as an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
The Importance of Big Data
What makes Big Data so useful to many companies is the fact that it provides answers to many questions that companies didn’t even know they had. In other words, with such a large amount of information, the data can be shaped or tested in any way the business sees fit. By doing so, organizations are able to identify problems in a more efficient and understandable way. Collecting vast amounts of data and finding trends within the data allow businesses to move much more quickly, smoothly, and effectively. Big data analytics helps organizations harness their data and use it to identify new opportunities, which leads to smarter business moves, more efficient operations, higher profits, and happier customers.
Benefits for the Companies
Big data technologies such as Hadoop and cloud-based analytics bring significant cost advantages when it comes to storing large amounts of data, as well as identifying more efficient ways of doing business. With the speed of Hadoop and in-memory analytics, combined with the ability to analyze new data sources, companies can immediately analyze information and make decisions based on that knowledge. With the ability to measure customer needs and satisfaction through analytics comes the power to give customers what they want. With Big Data analytics, more companies are creating new products to meet customer needs. The proliferation of smartphones and other GPS devices offers advertisers the opportunity to target consumers when they are near a store, coffee shop or restaurant. This opens up new revenue for service providers and offers many businesses the opportunity to get new prospects. Moreover, big data facilitate fraud detection and prevention in any industry that processes financial transactions online, such as shopping, banking, investing, insurance, and healthcare.
Possible Setbacks
The special characteristics of Big Data make its data quality face multiple challenges. These are known as 5 Vs: Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity and Value, which define the problem of Big Data. These 5 characteristics of big data cause companies to have problems extracting real and high-quality data from such massive, changing and complicated data sets. There are many sources and types of data, so the difficulty of data integration increases. Moreover, the volume of data is enormous, and this makes it difficult to execute a data quality process within a reasonable amount of time. It is difficult to collect, clean, integrate and obtain high-quality data quickly. It takes a lot of time to transform unstructured types into structured types and process that data. Another thing is that the data changes quickly and to solve it we need a very high processing power. If it is not done properly, the processing and analysis based on this data can produce wrong conclusions, which can lead to mistakes in decision making.
Online Safety
The quality of big data is the key, not only to be able to obtain competitive advantages but also to prevent serious strategic and operational errors based on inaccurate data with consequences that can be very serious and cause company crisis. That´s why online safety has become top priority, not only when it comes to big data analysis, but also when performing any online activity. Whether we are working, playing games or just trying to relax, it´s essential to keep safe, for example, at casino bonus safety is crucial, as they only hire people who have experience in online games of chance themselves and know exactly what to look out for and what should be avoided, as well as everything you need to know to get a great casino bonus.
In conclusion, big data has become essential for prosperity and expansion of enterprises and is very likely to continue that way in the future.
