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What Is Big Data? How Does Big Data Help Businesses In Expanding And Enhancing Growth?
Big data is a huge amount of data that continuously increases in volume and velocity by converging multiple varieties of data. As time passes, the volume and velocity of the big data increase parallelly. Big Data is the combination of data, but what could be that data? Data can be anything, a single picture, video, message, search query, phone call, email, music, and more. We use the data and generate it in a vast amount every day.
Let’s go through some numbers which give an idea about how much data is generated every minute on the internet. 2.1 million snaps are shared on Snapchat, 3.8 million search queries are searched on Google, 1 million people log on to Facebook, 4.5 million videos are watched on youtube, 188 million emails are shared on mail platforms and there are much more. Like this, on average one single person generates about 40 exabytes of data per month.
After knowing the stats, you might be interested to know more about the big data. So, we will be discussing What are the types & characteristics of Big Data, How big data work, and what are the benefits of Big Data?
What Are The Types Of Big Data?
Like all the other things on the globe, Big Data is also classified into 3 types and they are structured, semi-structured, and unstructured.
Structured Data
Data that is processed, stored, and accessed in a proper or fixed format is known as structured data. As the structured data is properly organized it became easier to understand for machine learning language. The studies of computer science have helped people in finding the techniques to work with such an enormous amount of data and deliver the best results out of it.
Example of Structured Data
Data like name, age, contact info, occupations, and more are stored in a fixed format on an Excel sheet and are considered structured data. So, these fixed formats help people to derive a final value easily.
Unstructured Data
Of course, Unstructured Data is the absolute opposite of structured data. Any data that is stored in an unknown format or structure comes under the unstructured data. It is really challenging to work with unstructured data, as it is hard to process and provide the deriving value from it.
In unstructured data, one can find the files like images, videos, text files, numbers, and more. One will have access to an ocean of data and information but can not conclude or derive a value from the vast amount of different data.
Example of Unstructured Data
The Google search results are the perfect example of this unstructured data. Soon after searching a keyword in a query, it provides numerous results in the form of news, blogs, images, videos, and more. Even after having most of the data and information, one can not go through all of them and provide the values easily.
Semi-Structured Data
As the name sounds, semi-structured data is neither available in a fixed or tabular format like structured nor completely raw like unstructured data. But, it does contain some tags and metadata that assist in analyzing and understanding data for delivering the derived data.
Example of Semi-Structured Data
The best examples are HTML codes and XML documents. In this, the user or analyst can find various types of data but can find some tags as hints to understand the data.
What Are The Main Characteristics Of Big Data?
Until now we learned that Big Data is the abbreviation of huge data that is collected from various sources. A large amount of data is often explained with five different characteristics. They are Volume, Value, Velocity, Variety, and Veracity. Let us learn what are they and how they represent big data.
Volume – Volume is one of the main characteristics that decides whether the data available is big data or not. The size of the data plays one of the important roles in determining the value of the data. So, Volume is one of the characteristics that needed to be considered while dealing with Big Data Solutions.
Value – In this section, one must always see the data from the perspective of business. Whatever data is available, it is useful to get better insights and patterns for finding business solutions. If the data is offering insights that enhance the productivity and connectivity with consumers, then we can consider the data as “Valuable data”.
Variety – Variety describes how diverse and unique are the data and its sources. Variety also decides whether the data is structured, unstructured, or semi-structured. The best examples of variety are images, videos, emails, monitoring devices, pdfs, audio, etc.
Velocity – In the section on velocity, we discuss the speed of data generation. As the flow of the data is continuous and humongous, velocity deals with the generation and processing of the data to meet the requirement and discover the potential of data.
Variability – Variability deals with the changes that happen in data once in a while. It is like harnessing the processing to understand the changes and manage them effectively.
What Are The Benefits Of Using Big Data In Businesses?
After going through the benefits of having Big Data in business, you might feel that Big Data is similar to Data Science. Sources like big data are very important for doing research as a data scientist. So, go through the benefits of having Big Data in Businesses.
Product Development – Big Data is used by many companies around the world. Even renowned companies like Netflix, and Proctor & Gamble also use Big Data to analyze the customer’s demand. As the data contains the performance and stats of past and present products or services, they can predict or anticipate changes in products or services for enhancing financial success.
Customer Experience – Customers are kings of every business. So, knowing what kings think about the products or services becomes important to survive in the competitive world. As big data is the collection of different types of data, business professionals can get the data of customer experience through social media, web visits, call logs, reviews, etc. With the help of this data, professionals can deliver customized products and services which gives scope to expand the business.
Fraud Compliance – Nowadays protecting files or data online has become more insane than offline. From the rouge to experts are waiting for a minute crack to get in and steal the data or get access to everything. So, Big Data gives you updates on data patterns that are prone to fraud and collects large amounts of data to enhance the speed of regulatory reporting.
Pilot Innovations – Big Data provides data that can relate every single person’s personal to a professional lifestyle. By this businesses can understand where people are facing issues, and what kind of innovations can solve the problems of people. With accurate information, businesses can focus on creating new products or services that can become trendy in the market.
Conclusion
The collection of different varieties of data in large velocity and volume is known as Big Data. Big Data has different structures and characteristics that help businesses in many ways. Big Data is one of the best resources to start research on anything. It contains data in the form of characters, images, videos, audio, emails, text messages, etc.
I’ve been following Softtune for a while now and it’s easily become my go-to source of information on big data. The articles are always well researched, comprehensive and easy to understand. Not only do they provide an in-depth look into the types and uses of big data structures, but also give practical advice on how to use them effectively. I highly recommend Softtune for anyone interested in learning more about big data!