Why is big data a buzzword at the moment?

How does big data work?

Big data itself isn’t useful but these massive volumes of data can address business problems that we wouldn’t be able to tackle otherwise. It comes from many different data sources, in enormous volumes, in a variety of formats, and at a high velocity. That’s why a mechanism to extract the data from all these sources is imperative.

These datasets are so voluminous that traditional data processing software cannot manage them. Between 50% and 80% of the work is getting the data ready. Companies must transform it into a standardized format and load it into a specific storage area, for example in the cloud, on-premise, or both.

Once completed, data scientists can actually begin to analyze the data. No matter if it’s a simple algorithm or a complex neural network, most often the investment pays off. By analyzing all the historical data, the companies can improve their product lines, cut manufacturing, logistics, marketing and sales costs, improve their efficiency, etc.

What are the world trends with big data?

In recent years, we have witnessed the evolution of different IaaS platforms. These services have evolved in terms of storing and managing data, and are designed to work more efficiently and effectively than traditional frameworks.

Using these services where Data Engineers and Scientists can prepare, analyze and visualize big data is crucial for future dig data evolution. By using and expanding these services, companies will proceed with their digital transformation process, so there is no doubt that this process will advance even faster than before.

On the other side, IoT, AI, Machine Learning and Blockchain are feeding big data and pushing it forward to undiscovered territories. In recent years, not only enterprise companies are using big data, but more and more startups, small and medium companies heavily rely on this practice.

IT companies are also expected to evolve even more by developing life-cycle management processes that can support the creation of analytics apps and spread their products and services lines in this direction. In views of that, we should expect an even greater expansion of big data and analytics as part of this growth.

What are the challenges with the increasing volume of data?

Although new technologies have been developed for data storage, data volumes are doubling in size about every two years. This trend is about to expand even further, while organizations are still struggling to keep pace with their data and find ways to effectively store it.

The best way around it is to optimize the use of all that data. Today, organizations lose huge amounts of money every year from the cost of poor-quality data storage, and it remains to be seen how that is going to be addressed.

IoT connected devices are expected to reach a staggering 75 billion in 2025 from 27 billion devices currently, so it’s easy to see where that big data is coming from. IaaS providers will continue to build new data centers to store and manage this influx of data.

And what are the challenges when it comes to data security?

When talking about data security, we immediately get to General Data Protection Regulation that took effect in 2018. As we know, the GDPR is focused in Europe but at the same time some organizations, in an effort to simplify their business and promote good customer relations, have provided the same privacy protections for all their customers, regardless of their region.

However, this is not the general position taken by all the businesses and organizations outside of Europe. The good news is that the biggest IaaS providers are already designed with industry-leading security measures and privacy policies to safeguard the data in the cloud.

This includes the categories of personal data identified by the GDPR. Furthermore, there is an existing trend of making hybrid clouds – a mix of IaaS (public) Clouds and on-premises (private) Clouds. Some organizations want to keep some sensitive data secure in their own data storage and the rest of the data to put on a rental Cloud storage. Companies are heavily investing in data security and this tendency is here to stay.