What is Big Data and How Can it be Managed by Large Businesses?

As a business grows and enters new markets, it will also receive data from many new sources, which can be difficult to process, categorise, and store in a meaningful way. 

An effective data management strategy is necessary to enable a business’s search and retrieval systems to scale in step with organisational growth and changes in complexity, which will in turn mean that the right information is readily available to support business decisions.

What Is “Big Data”?

In simple terms, ‘big data’ comprises larger, complex data sets from diverse data sources, composed of a variety of file types. Due to the size of the data sets, conventional data processing software often cannot manage search and retrieval requests effectively. 

When designing a big data management strategy, there are three attributes of big data of which to be aware:

1. Volume: High volumes of unstructured, low-density data that need to be processed, often of an undetermined value, for example from social media data feeds, web page clickstreams, or sensor-enabled apparatus.
2. Velocity: Velocity is the speed at which data is received and responded to from the business. The highest velocity data enters the system instantly, usually directly to memory, while slower velocity data must be painstakingly processed and written to disk.
3. Variety: Many types of data flow into a large company, both traditional structured data, which embeds comfortably into a database, and unstructured data which requires additional processing. 

Big Data Management And Processing For Large Companies

Managing big data effectively can create lucrative new opportunities and business models, with three core actions to undertake:

1. Integrate: Because big data arrives from many sources, purpose-designed search software is needed to integrate it by extracting, transforming, and loading it in a format that your analysts can use – particularly if there are large volumes of data to process in response to specific queries.
2. Manage: Big data is intrinsically complex. You need to be able to capture and store it as it flows into your business and distributes it to tens or hundreds of applications, often in real time. Big data can be more effectively managed using automated intelligent search processes and software which cannot be achieved with traditional data processing systems. Once this is achieved, the business’s decision-making processes will be streamlined and accelerated, so that the organisation is more competitive, versatile, and responsive.
3. Analyse: High-level, automated systems help to ensure that complex data-driven operations run smoothly, by giving staff access to and visibility over complex data sets, disseminating findings to others and creating data models using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Contact Flare Solutions To Find Out More

If you are seeking effective ways to improve your business’s management of big data, please download our free guide or call us today on 02033977766.