Big Data is a group of data that is immense in volume still developing exponentially with time. It includes both structured and unstructured data that inundates an organization on an everyday basis. Big data is of huge size and intricacy that none of the conventional data management mechanisms can store or process adeptly and effortlessly. This massive volume of data can be employed to address business difficulties you would not have been able to tackle before.
The Four V’s of Big Data
Volume
Big data is a term used to describe data sets of such size and complexity that they can no longer fit on a single computer hard drive. The size of data has a very crucial role in establishing the value out of data. With big data, you will have to process huge volumes of low-density, unstructured data. This data can be of unknown value like Twitter data feeds, sensor-enabled equipment, or clickstreams on a mobile app or a web page. For some businesses, this might be tenfold terabytes of data. For others, this may be hundreds of petabytes. Therefore, ‘Volume’ is a major characteristic that requires to be analyzed while dealing with Big Data solutions.
Variety
Variety is the next aspect of Big Data. It refers to various sources and the nature of data. During earlier times, databases and spreadsheets were the only sources of data deemed by most applications. In this day and age, data in the form of photos, videos, emails, monitoring devices, audio, PDFs, etc., are also being recognized in analysis applications. This unstructured data professes certain problems for mining, storage, and analyzing data.
Velocity
Velocity means the speed of the generation of data. The speed at which data is generated and primed to meet the requirements determines true potential in the data. Big Data is the velocity at which data streams in from sources, such as application logs, networks, business processes, social media sites, Mobile devices, sensors, etc. The flow of data is extensive and continuous.
Variability
Variability refers to the inequality and inconsistency that can be exhibited by the data, therefore hindering the process of being equipped to handle and control the data effectively.
Final Words
Big Data is defined in an interesting way, namely data that is extremely huge in size. It is growing exponentially with time, and it is created by many different applications that are in use in the world. Today, big data has been categorized into different types. It has been categorized according to the device it is generated from, the way it is processed, and the type of data it is.
