Big Data is the term for a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, transfer, analysis and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to "spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions."
So how important is Big Data in the business world? Big Data is becoming a top priority to enterprises small and large. According to Network World, 19% of companies have already implemented their big data projects, 25% are in the process, 16% plan to deploy their projects over the next 12 months, and 16% within the next 13-24 months. The other 23% are struggling to find the right strategy or solutions.
So how important is Big Data in the business world? Big Data is becoming a top priority to enterprises small and large. According to Network World, 19% of companies have already implemented their big data projects, 25% are in the process, 16% plan to deploy their projects over the next 12 months, and 16% within the next 13-24 months. The other 23% are struggling to find the right strategy or solutions.
Enterprises are investing a lot of
money and time into these Big Data projects.
In 2017, the Big Data market is expecting to reach 32.4 billion dollars,
growing at a rate of 27% each year. (IDC)
Goals include improving the quality and speed of decision-making,
forecasting, developing new products and services, acquiring new customers, and
building partnerships. There are a multitude of uses and reasons for acquiring data on such a grand scale. For the first time in the history of man, we have the ability to gather information as vast as space and use it to benefit our lives, our business, and our world. But with this great power comes great responsibility with not everyone feeling the same about how it should be used. Having said that, I think this "Big Data" business should be discussed with a positive vs. negative approach. First the positives.
Big Data has assisted us in rapid advancements in innovation, productivity, and competition. Increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprise, the rise of multimedia, social media, the internet, and our modern day purchasing and transaction habits are fueling this exponential growth of data with no slowing predicted for the future. There are five domains which have been found to enjoy great value generation from Big Data - U.S. Healthcare, The European Public Sector, retailers of all kinds in the U.S., and Global Manufacturing and Personal- Location Data.
A few great examples of Big Data at work would be, an average of 60% increase in operating margin by the retailers who learned how to utilize Big Data to the fullest, and a $300 Billion creation in value for the Healthcare sector in the U.S. each year. That could translate to reductions of health care expenditures in the U.S. by 8%. Big Data can also be used by Governments and the I.R.S. to reduce fraud and errors, and boost the collection of tax revenues. Data has become an important factor in every industry and business globally for production, forecasting, labor and cost just to name a few. By making data more transparent and usable at higher frequencies, they can collect more accurate and detailed performance information on every aspect of business operations, product inventories, and even employee attendance.
Big Data is rapidly becoming a necessity for any company wishing to remain competitive and retain any hope of future growth of real size. Individual firms are using Big Data to find out information about how to gain and retain customer loyalty, and also how to make your loyal customers theirs. Now the negatives.
Big Data has brought with it a great threat to our privacy and basic human rights of personal control. Companies and Government agencies are collecting uncountable amounts of personal information about people every day mining databases to discover subtle patterns, correlations, or relationships that our brains can't perceive on their own because the scales involved are beyond our ability to process. This type of Data Mining is called "Macro-scope" because it makes things visible to them about us that could never be seen before. Target Retail Stores have been found to be using a combination of personal data with external data sets to infer new facts about customers that even their own families might not know yet like whether they are sick, or pregnant, or a widow or recently divorced just by recording our buying patterns. They even can tell if you have a subconscious attraction to a particular color or material.
Target and other retailers take this data and use it to decide what to advertise and how to customize the advertisements to exactly your desires on a individual subconscious level without you even knowing. This way, they can manipulate your buying patterns based on fear or other life events and strong emotions. This is a violation of basic human principles of personal control and privacy. Big Data is also used by companies for what they call "risk analysis", although it should be called unfair profiling. This "behavior scoring"goes on in Insurance companies or banks or companies offering credit as a sort of guilt by association grouping of people of the same race, or area, or economic background and has no real bearing on their true individual credit worthiness or payment history, or income.
Big Data has assisted us in rapid advancements in innovation, productivity, and competition. Increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprise, the rise of multimedia, social media, the internet, and our modern day purchasing and transaction habits are fueling this exponential growth of data with no slowing predicted for the future. There are five domains which have been found to enjoy great value generation from Big Data - U.S. Healthcare, The European Public Sector, retailers of all kinds in the U.S., and Global Manufacturing and Personal- Location Data.
A few great examples of Big Data at work would be, an average of 60% increase in operating margin by the retailers who learned how to utilize Big Data to the fullest, and a $300 Billion creation in value for the Healthcare sector in the U.S. each year. That could translate to reductions of health care expenditures in the U.S. by 8%. Big Data can also be used by Governments and the I.R.S. to reduce fraud and errors, and boost the collection of tax revenues. Data has become an important factor in every industry and business globally for production, forecasting, labor and cost just to name a few. By making data more transparent and usable at higher frequencies, they can collect more accurate and detailed performance information on every aspect of business operations, product inventories, and even employee attendance.
Big Data is rapidly becoming a necessity for any company wishing to remain competitive and retain any hope of future growth of real size. Individual firms are using Big Data to find out information about how to gain and retain customer loyalty, and also how to make your loyal customers theirs. Now the negatives.
Big Data has brought with it a great threat to our privacy and basic human rights of personal control. Companies and Government agencies are collecting uncountable amounts of personal information about people every day mining databases to discover subtle patterns, correlations, or relationships that our brains can't perceive on their own because the scales involved are beyond our ability to process. This type of Data Mining is called "Macro-scope" because it makes things visible to them about us that could never be seen before. Target Retail Stores have been found to be using a combination of personal data with external data sets to infer new facts about customers that even their own families might not know yet like whether they are sick, or pregnant, or a widow or recently divorced just by recording our buying patterns. They even can tell if you have a subconscious attraction to a particular color or material.
Target and other retailers take this data and use it to decide what to advertise and how to customize the advertisements to exactly your desires on a individual subconscious level without you even knowing. This way, they can manipulate your buying patterns based on fear or other life events and strong emotions. This is a violation of basic human principles of personal control and privacy. Big Data is also used by companies for what they call "risk analysis", although it should be called unfair profiling. This "behavior scoring"goes on in Insurance companies or banks or companies offering credit as a sort of guilt by association grouping of people of the same race, or area, or economic background and has no real bearing on their true individual credit worthiness or payment history, or income.
