Would you believe it if we told you that we produce more data in 2 days today than we did in decades? Every person is on the Internet. Whether it’s for work or for leisure, we spend several hours every day browsing the web, and in doing so, we generate data.
The huge volumes of data present a tremendous opportunity for businesses. If they can analyze this data, they can understand their customers better and create personalized marketing campaigns, deliver better customer service, improve their operations, and perform other well-informed actions that would ultimately result in more revenue and profit for the business.
The massive volumes of data referred to as Big Data can’t be processed using traditional systems. The data is too much and too complicated for the regular systems to process. But thanks to advancements in technology and data science, there are now ways in which big data can be processed and analyzed to provide valuable insights that would help businesses reach new heights of success.
This blog will help you understand big data better and talk about what the future holds for big data and the trends you should keep an eye out for.
What is Big Data, and Why Is It So Important for Businesses?
Big data is a huge volume of data. The data is a combination of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data collected by organizations to extract valuable insights that can help their business. Traditional systems can’t analyze big data because of the huge volumes, but considering the value big data can add to a business, systems that can process big data are now a common part of the data management architectures of most organizations.
Big data is characterized by the 5 V’s:
- Volume: the size and amount of data that is collected, managed, and analyzed.
- Velocity: the speed at which huge volumes of data are generated, stored, and analyzed.
- Veracity: the truth or correctness of the collected data.
- Variety: the different types and formats of data that are collected.
- Value: the insight collected data provides that helps businesses achieve their objectives.
You may wonder why a company would overburden itself with such huge volumes of data. Well, big data isn’t just packs of data – but it’s actually power packs of valuable information that can help businesses in numerous ways.
Analyzing big data can help companies extract value from raw data, enabling them to tackle problems easily. Organizations can use big data to better understand their customers and their behaviors and design better marketing strategies, personalized services, and customer service. Big data can also help companies identify their weak spots and enable them to improve their operations. All in all, big data analytics is the ultimate tool that companies need to get information that can help them explore new horizons and possibilities for their business.
What Does the Future Look Like for Big Data?
Data offers significant value for businesses and the world economy. It enhances the competitiveness and productivity of companies and enables them to create a substantial economic surplus. It won’t be an exaggeration if we say that big data is the new raw material for business that’s driving businesses today. Having said that, there’s no denying the fact that the reliance on data will only increase in the future.
What does that mean for big data? What does the future look like for big data? Let’s see:
Volumes of Data Will Continue to Increase
Just because big data can’t be processed on traditional systems doesn’t mean the volumes of data won’t continue to increase in the future. Thanks to technological advancements, more advanced systems are being developed that can process big data. Experts agree that the volume of data will continue to increase exponentially. By 2025, the volume of data will increase to 175 zettabytes by 2025.
If you don’t know how much data that is, look at it this way. If you looked at the volume of data in a 128GB iPad in 2003, it would stack to a height that would cover two-thirds of the distance from the Earth to the moon. By 2025, this data will increase so much that the height of stacked data will be 26 times longer.
There are numerous reasons for this prediction about an exponential increase in data in the future. Firstly, the number of internet users is increasing with every passing day. All their activities generate data. Secondly, billions of devices and systems create, collect, and share data through IoT analytics every day.
Machine Learning Will Become More Popular
Machine Learning is playing a significant role in big data. Machine learning-powered fraud detection devices and self-driving cars display a fraction of the potential of machine learning. Technology is getting more sophisticated with time, and we’ll see an increase in its popularity and application in the future.
According to experts, the ability of computers to ‘learn’ from data will improve with the application of an unsupervised machine learning approach. Other factors that will make computers smarter in the future include cognitive services and greater personalization. The result will be smarter and more intelligent machines that will not only analyze data but also read emotions, treat patients, explore space, and drive cars!
Combining big data, machine learning, and natural language processing will enable computers to analyze data themselves and generate valuable information that would otherwise be impossible for humans, like identifying new disease patterns before they present themselves!
The Demand for Data Scientists will Skyrocket
What’s the use of big data if it isn’t analyzed? And who analyzes big data? Data Scientists and Chief Data Officers. With big data on an upward trajectory, the demand for Data Scientists and Chief Data Officers will increase in the future. Since it’s already expected that the volume of data will increase in the future, it’s given that the need for data experts will also increase exponentially.
With that, Data Scientists and other individuals with expertise in collecting and analyzing data can expect higher salaries.
Fast Data and Actionable Data will Rise
It’s also predicted that fast data and actionable data will rise in the future. Fast data is different from big data. Big data relies on NoSQL and Hadoop databases for batch processing and analysis of data, but fast data allows real-time processing of data, which helps analyze big data in just milliseconds, thereby bringing more value to the business and enabling organizations to take important actions immediately.
Actionable data, on the other hand, is the link between big data and business value. Big data is useless if it’s not properly analyzed. It’s voluminous, multi-structured, and complex, which makes its analysis difficult. Numerous platforms and tools are available to help organizations to extract accurate and actionable information from this pool of data and enable companies to make informed decisions and reap the benefits of big data analytics.
As big data increases, the need for faster and more accurate extraction of valuable information will also increase.
Big Data Trends to Keep a Lookout for
Big data has already found widespread applications in various industries, helping organizations make important business decisions and devise critical business strategies. But if we talk about what’s next for big data, we can be certain about one thing – the future is quite bright for big data. Big data will become a common business tool for organizations in every industry.
Let’s look at some of the big data trends that you should keep a lookout for:
Big Data in Banking and Finance Sector
The application of big data in the banking and finance sector is expected to increase. Even today, the banking and finance sector invests big amounts of money in big data analytics because of its potential to prevent fraudulent activities.
Technology has changed the way the banking industry operates. From mobile banking to instant funds transfer, banking is only becoming more advanced with time. This has increased the risk of fraudulent activities, and to prevent that from happening, banks are already using big data analytics.
Big data combined with other technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can help financial institutions detect customer behavior patterns and fraud before it occurs. Banks will be able to identify suspicious activities quickly and prevent fraud, which costs banks millions of dollars of loss. Considering the potential of big data in preventing fraud, the financial institutions’ reliance on big data will only increase further.
Big Data in Government
Big data analytics can help the government to collect important insights from around the world and use that information to improve their public sector, including citizen services, public safety, healthcare, etc. Big data will also help the government understand the needs of their citizens better, which would enable them to implement measures that would solve the public’s problems in a better way.
Not only this, but the government can also use big data analytics to speed up the analysis of information, which would enable them to take necessary steps and make much-needed improvements well in time. Big data analytics can also help the government to establish better policies based on the data collected.
Big Data in Healthcare
The healthcare industry is already using big data more than other industries. The healthcare industry receives tremendous amounts of data through electronic patient records, pharmaceutical research, and medical imaging. Not only this, the latest wearable devices like Fitbit fitness bands collect real-time health data from the patients and feed it into the data pool.
Big data analytics has helped healthcare professionals identify new disease patterns, design more effective treatment plans, diagnose patients sooner and more accurately, prevent diseases, and improve the overall efficiency and quality of the healthcare industry.
The Future is Bright
The future of big data analytics is bright. Many companies have already started to reap benefits from big data, but they still haven’t fully embraced it. Even with the partial application, companies that are using big data analytics have an edge over their competitors. Imagine what big data will do for businesses once they discover the full potential of big data.
Data engineers and scientists are already on to developing smarter ways to help them analyze big data fully and extract the hidden secrets that could help organizations move closer to achieving their business goals.
The field of big data has been rapidly growing and is expected to continue to do so in the foreseeable future. The amount of data generated by various sources is increasing at an unprecedented rate, and this data has the potential to provide valuable insights and solutions to a wide range of industries and fields.
However, there are also concerns about the ethical and legal implications of collecting and using large amounts of personal data and potential inaccuracies in data analysis.
Therefore, the future of big data depends on how well these concerns are addressed and how effectively is the power of data harnessed for positive outcomes. Overall, with proper management and ethical practices, big data has the potential to bring about significant advancements for businesses in all industries.
Final Word
If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, you must leverage the power of big data. The right data analytics consulting services can help you design data analytics solutions catered to your business needs.
Data analytics services like GCTechInfo can serve as the bridge that could connect you to the world of big data and help you reach new heights of success!
