Big Data

Big Data

Big Data is one of the hottest topics in business today. Data analysis is just not good enough anymore when the data generated and analyzed comes from a silo. Technology companies and companies that started recently and invested in modern data warehouses and technologies may already be using Big Data, a benefit of being technology forward or relatively young in the case of recent startup businesses. Apple Computer, often cited as being great here, great there, great execution here and great execution there was not always the technology leader. Tesla although, benefited from their technology roots and benefited from their relatively recent entry into the automotive industry and may be the automotive king of Big Data. Apple and Tesla are two extremely different companies that collect massive amounts of data, and use them well. So, what is Big Data? It’s not just the hottest term in business, there are benefits! Big Data can: establish or re-establish dialogue with consumers, assist in product re-development and product refreshes, perform true ROI by encompassing the entire product life cycle including warranty costs, analyze risk factors, help identify new revenue streams and many other benefits depending on the depth of the data available to the company investing in Big Data.

Big Data utilizes both hardware and software in its application. Big Data may begin with a data warehouse or a complete DBMS. Hadoop is an example of a Big Data software framework and is also open source. Hadoop is used by Amazon Web Services, Cloudera, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Teradata and many others. Not every company listed previously uses the pure open source version of Hadoop but has generally made changes to the open source so they can add value to their services for potential business programs and ventures. Hadoop is one of the early adopters of Big Data and has become the de facto standard for large and small scale implementations. “Hadoop is not a single...