Taking in Big Data is Step One But Step Two is What Matters

Big data and boy bands? That's the analogy that Smart Data Collective makes in their article, "Why Big Data And Business Intelligence Are Like One Direction." While the British boy band One Direction and big data both have completely different audiences, they are both compelling and attractive to their respective followers. Big data has captivated the attention of many CEOs and lower-level executives alike. This article offers a rundown on what it is, exactly.

On the level even boy band fans could understand, big data comprises the three V’s. Volume refers to the total amount of data. Variety obviously implies there are different data types – structured and unstructured. Of course, Velocity is the speed with which you are acquiring, processing and querying data.

The article states:

It’s really the amount of data you need to collect to support a specific reporting and analytics objective, which in turn supports a clearly defined business goal. This is true volume. After all, what’s the point in collecting data for the sake of it? The value in Big Data doesn’t dwell in the data itself, or in its increasing volume. Value is achieved through the ability to extract and act on insights derived from that data, for direct or indirect (usually financial) gain.

It's not the amount of data that you can take in, but rather the amount of information intelligence that comes out of it.

Megan Feil, October 5, 2012

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext