Big Data & Why It's Important

Posted by Sarah Wayne on January 27th, 2017

Big data is a terminology to describe data sets that are too complex for the traditional technology applications to process and are unable to analyze, search, share, store, and transfer the data. Through the analysis of these large data sets, we will be able to discover connections that will be able to pinpoint trends in business, prevent diseases, and resolve crime.

Many people in science, business, finance, medicine, marketing, and government find it difficult to manage large data they require for use in internet searches, business strategy, financial analysis,and scientific research on complex physics and genomics.

The worldwide middle-class sector has grown to over one billion people between 1990 and 2005, increasing the amount of available data to be found and researched around the world. This huge amount of information growth has contributed to the need for big data solutions.

Large available data sets are growing fast every day through the use of activity of people on mobile devices; and more data sets can be acquired through software logs, microphones, cameras, and wireless network activities. Currently, the capacity to store information online has doubled every forty months since the1980’s; and in 2012, figures show that 2.5 Exabyte’s of data are generated every day.

Big data architecture patterns are highly important to developed economies that rely on the processing of huge amounts of data to be successful. For example, mobile phone companies have 4.6 billion mobile phones subscriptions worldwide and over 2 billion people accessing the internet through them, big data solutions are very important to manage the amount of information data these customers generate.

The Importance

Just as companies have the data of their customers, governments have to deal with the data of their citizens in order to more effectively govern and provide for them. There are sometimes flaws in the government relating to collaboration between offices and the bureaucracy of starting new research projects, but the need for solutions to manage the data sets of an entire country are still relevant. Moreover, the United States Federal Government is in possession of six of the most powerful supercomputers in the world that has features beyond generic computers most people own, allowing them to process big data more effectively.

In India, big data analysis was a big part in presenting the BJP win for the Indian General Election which was in 2014. The Indian government also uses a number of methods of analysis to discover how the Indian electorate has reacted to government actions in the past and present, which forms ideas for future policies.

When it comes to collecting data, local authorities use data about various services in the UK, such as road gritting agendas and services for those at risk. This collection of data ultimately allows the local authority to prevent weather related delay of traffic.