You must have come across the terms big data and cloud computing, along with other big-ticket terms like Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning. The one common theme across them is the data and not only data but the massive volume of data associated with these systems. The sections below explore why big data exists and how big data and cloud computing are related.
To understand the interrelationship between big data and cloud computing, you need to know what each of these terms means. Big data can be independent of cloud computing and vice versa, but they are usually employed together to implement an effective and data-efficient system in today’s world.
What is Big Data?
In simple terms, big data refers to data handled at the scale and variety that today’s systems demand. Data today is being extracted from every source possible and stored in various formats. The traditional systems of data warehouses required you to pick and choose only data that you think is quantifiable and meaningful. This resulted in capturing only certain aspects of a given business transaction that could provide meaningful insights. In recent years, that school of thought has evolved. Today any kind of data can be significant, which includes log files, image files, video footage, chat transcripts, and the like. Companies did not build traditional systems to handle this kind of variety. With the added dimension of speed with which this data is being captured, there was a need to have a system that can ingest, store, and process this data in a distributed fashion, sometimes in real-time. This requires computing training, specialized hardware, and software application specially designed distributed computing algorithms to break up the data process and put it back together at lightning speeds. Such a system is referred to as Big Data Analyst Training in Paris
Big Data is thus used to refer to the complexity, variety, and velocity of data moving about in any given business of today. It is also used to refer to the ecosystem composed of hardware components and software programs that make it possible to tame this humongous data.
There are several characteristics of big data. Let’s quickly and briefly go through them.
Five characteristics characterize big data, famously called the 5 V’s of Big data.
Volume
With technological advancement, it became possible to sense, capture, and store data from every digitally-enabled part of any business. It is believed that the volume that a business handles almost doubles every 40 months or so. This volume is contributed to by IoT devices, application software databases, system log files, contracts, and other business transactions.
Velocity
With the increase in the data that is captured, data is being generated faster than ever. With businesses showing interest in IoT devices, the rate at which data is captured in its raw form has multiplied over several times for some businesses. Some businesses need real-time data analysis and thus need a system that can ingest data as quickly as possible.
Variety
Since data in any form is considered beneficial, it becomes imperative to capture data in whatever format it exists, store it and then perform analysis to gather insights. Social media data is one such important source of insight for businesses. The format of social media posts is very raw that includes texts, images, and videos. A big data solution must capture this data in the form it is presented as any efforts in analyzing the data before storing it will impact response times.
Veracity
Veracity refers to the quality of the data. There is always this question about whether the data is trustworthy. How clean and accurate is the data? It is about the quality of data, the source of the data, and the quality of processing data.
Value
Value is understandably what a business looks to derive out of this heap of data. How valuable are the insights derived from such a big exercise? Big data systems have to assure or offer enough confidence to stakeholders that there is enough business value that can be derived from the system.
What Is Cloud Computing?
As per Wikipedia, cloud computing is “the on-demand availability of computing resources like data storage, processing power and memory without any active management of these resources by the user.”
The term cloud computing is said to have been used for the first time in 2006 by Eric Schmidt. Cloud is, as a matter of fact, a loosely used term in networking that points to a bunch of interconnected computers.
In other terms, cloud computing is a utility in some sense that hosts services, sells products online, stores data, compute resources, and many more.
Cloud computing today can offer any computing resource over the internet, including big data services.
How Are Big Data And Cloud Computing Related?
Big data is not a solution that you can implement overnight. It needs heavy investment in terms of capital and resources, which include hardware, skilled workforce, IoT networks, and more, big data software, among others. Cloud computing resolves the problem by offering Big data services on the cloud. Now, this can be a public cloud or a private managed cloud, depending on the requirements of your business.
The technology behind cloud computing allows you to create your own big data ecosystem to handle the big data that constantly flows around in your business. The good news is organisations can do this in a matter of days rather than weeks or months, and you pay only for what you use. While it depends on the kind of contract you enter with the cloud computing service provider, generally, your operating costs are much lower than running an actual brick and mortar Big data setup.
Conclusion
Big data today is a vital technology being offered by cloud computing services over the internet. This trend will only increase as more businesses start seeing more excellent value in moving onto a system that captures everything out and about their business and generates valuable insight. This demand also provides an opportunity for those with cloud computing training to advance their careers. If this has generated interest in knowing more about big data or cloud computing, one good resource is Great Learning. You can browse numerous computing training courses offered by Greatlearning.
