What is "Big Data?" "Big Data" is a catch phrase that has been bubbling up from the high performance computing niche of the IT market.
Increasingly suppliers of processing virtualization and storage virtualization software have begun to flog "Big Data" in their presentations. What, exactly, does this phrase mean? If one sits through the presentations from ten suppliers of technology, fifteen or so different definitions are likely to come forward. Each definition, of course, tends to support the need for that supplier's products and services.
Imagine that. Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets—so-called big data—will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus, according to research by MGI and McKinsey's Business Technology Office.
Leaders in every sector will have to grapple with the implications of big data, not just a few data-oriented managers. The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future. What is big data? Big data is data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems.
The data is too big, moves too fast, or doesn’t fit the strictures of your database architectures. To gain value from this data, you must choose an alternative way to process it.