101 on Big Data

Yup, the buzzword now is Big Data. People talk about big data in every conference even if it not relevant to the conference J as a technique to pull crowd ….But interestingly many are confused on what really “Big data” means. Is it a tool, technology, platform, a new terminology etc? May be this blog can help a naive to understand what big data means …

To put in simple terms, Big Data is a new terminology to represent something that is around for quite some time. It is as simple as a new Buzz Word to represent large volume of data. Why all of a sudden this buzz? Isn’t the large data volume existed before?

Yes, large volume existed before in structured form (database) but in today’s world unstructured data is growing exponentially every day due to contemporary sources of data like Social Media, Emails, Blogs, Sensors capturing variety of information in near real time basis etc, hence Big Data’s growing importance.

As everyone understands data is not information. Data is raw, information is meaningful. You would get lost with tons of data but information provides you specifics that help you to take actions. So it is imperative that you need your tools and ammunition to mine into the Big Data that your organization collects from multiple sources to make meaningful decisions and actions.

So what makes it so difficult to analyze big data? In addition to the volume, the rate at which the data grows as well as increasing number of varieties of data that is getting added day to day makes it complex to analyze independently and collectively. Saying that it makes sense to invest on analyzing this as in Today’s digital world, data provides Organization meaningful information to future in terms of better service, better products, being responsive etc creating distinctive competitive advantage for you.

There are quantified metrics to prove that timely analysis of Big Data helps in improving your customer satisfaction by “sensing” the tweets you receive from your social channels, quickly come up with products / services that customer talks about in the Social space, reduce the mortality rate by your quick ability to analyze patient’s conditions coming from myriad of sensors, swift actions to safeguard organization / country’s security etc.

Thus comes mushrooming tools to support the above. Every “Big B” in information technology world is into providing tools to mine and make sense out of Big Data. Some of the leading companies that you can explore are here

• Oracle
• IBM
• Intel
  
• SAS etc

So it net it makes sense to explore the applicability of these tools in your Organization’s context to ensure you are not a laggard as you know in today’s digital world timely Information is $$$

 Venkatesan Sundaram
Senior Director, CRMIT

Originally published in Venky’s Blog