What is Big Data and why is it important?
Big data refers to massively complex structured and unstructured data sets that are rapidly generated and transmitted from numerous sources. These characteristics comprise the three Vs of big data:
- Volume refers to the enormous amounts of data that can be stored.
- Velocity The lightning-fast rate at which data streams must be processed and analyzed.
- Variety refers to the various sources and forms of data that are collected, such as numbers, text, video, images, audio, and text.
The sheer size and complexity of big data is what makes it so valuable. We create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day which comes from a variety of sources, including social media posts, website clicks, purchase histories, and GPS locations. By analyzing this data, businesses can gain a better understanding of their customers, their products, services, and competition.
What is the key difference between Big data and BI?
These are some key difference between Big Data and BI:
In the context of BI, information is stored on a central server (data warehouse), whereas Big Data uses a distributed file system, which not only makes operations more flexible but also makes data preservation safer.
Big Data deals with structured and unstructured data (from various sources, including those outside the company, such as social networks), whereas Business Intelligence analyses structured or semi-structured data, which is mostly internal to society.
BI relies on historical data to make future decisions, whereas Big Data solutions can search for both historical and real-time data sources.
Big Data solutions bring processing functions to the data rather than the data to the processing functions. The analysis is information-focused, which is not the focus of business intelligence tools, as they tend to bring data to treatment.
