With the online world now being the biggest market space for businesses worldwide, Big Data is proving to be their most powerful tool-set to own and use. Almost all websites and applications track user browsing movement to record and later analyze user requirements and choices. The technology of big data includes not only collecting data, but also understanding and analyzing it to create user behavioral patterns. Only, then it can be made useful for businesses. Big data application developments pave the way to develop next level market research, prototype developments, product development and evolution, user acquisition and marketing tools. Thus, most of the businesses are looking out to use the technology of ‘big data’ in newer, more innovative forms.
The Initials of ‘Big Data’
Collecting data is not a new concept, but the way it is handled is new and further evolving by the day. Earlier data was stored in in-house data storage units that required a lot of physical space. This data was analyzed by technologies like the RDBM’s and other database management systems wherein data was stored in the form of tables and arrays that was then retrieved using queries. With increase in data, these technologies went on to become redundant.
Owing to the large number of digital devices including computers, mobiles, iOT other devices now collecting eons of data, handling data and optimizing it for further usage had become a herculean task. Due to these reasons, big data in the past was generally only limited in use by large corporations that could actually afford the cost of storing this huge amount of data and then getting these analysis algorithms developed and employed for further usage.
Things Changed With the Onset of Cloud Technologies
Everything changed for ‘big data’ with Cloud Services. This technology has basically nullified the requirements of huge hardware for storage of continuously increasing and evolving sets of data. Apart from the data storage, even data processing algorithms are now available on clouds for easy usage. This has considerably brought down the technology usage costs and other limitations like required space. With every other business, now collecting data in the form of cookies and other tools, the data collected has been multiplying both in volumes and power.
‘We have already crossed the 1 Zettabyte Threshold. As per reports, the world will reach 2.3 Zettabytes of annual Internet traffic by 2020 ’
The Geo Sync Data with Smartphones
The newer mobile app development frameworks with their location and geo-tagging features have enabled the development of a new dimension of data that includes tracking user movements, not just digitally, but also physically; leading to the opening of a new sector of business operations. This data can much more effectively and precariously determine user behavior patterns. For instance, the Google Maps, travel websites and apps, even retail platforms are now using location data to provide customized content to the users.
iOT devices are taking Big Data’s relevance further ahead
Everything is slowly getting digitized in our lives. This mostly includes all our various daily use appliances that can be stimulated using technology. Our televisions, washing machines, watches, light bulbs, fans and even clothes are now smart devices and thus, tracked. All these devices are a huge source of user data that again is an important part of big data developments and analysis, leading to creation of invaluable real-time behavioral patterns that are being utilized by businesses all over. For instance, when you tell ‘Alexa’ or ‘Google Home’ about the travel bookings about a certain destination, its parent company would know that you intend to visit that destination. Related information and queries like hotel bookings could thus follow from businesses. Human sleep patterns can now be monitored for effectivity through smart wearables using Big Data statistics.
Chatbots : The future of Big Data
Big Data is basically the steady and gigantic flow of information that is collected and leveraged by businesses to improve marketing and customer service. It’s overall efficiency is centered around its volume, velocity and variations. The more, the merrier. Chatbots enable easy collection of this data in huge volumes. With robotic speed chatbots can communicate with several customers together and provide a very high rate of customer engagement and satisfaction levels. This is the reason they are now being employed by several medical, insurance, banking businesses, etc. for online user interactions.
Chatbots and Big Data share a mutually symbiotic relationship wherein one helps the other and vice versa.The increasingly voluminous data collected by bots is now being increasingly used to analyse human mindsets as well. The concept is being used to develop systems for ‘sentiment analysis’, the practice of trying to determine a person’s emotional reaction to something through text. As bots collect more data and successfully identify more sentiments, they become better at analyzing that information and in process, themselves become smarter. Thus, they help each other to form an evolving chain of mutual improvements which when combined with technologies like AI and machine, tend to unearth and develop new user-centric and future-ready systems.
This is where the world is headed
Big data is basically handling unstructured data wherein data sizes run greater than terabytes and petabytes. As mobile apps, social networks, web search requests, text messages, and media files amongst others, churn up eons of data every second, the world’s data is touted to reach the 175 Zettabyte mark by 2025. With the recent developments of pay-as-you-go services, the cloud infrastructure is set to provide immense agility, scalability, and ease of use to big data technologies and its applications. The technologies of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence shall further augment its utility and affectivity. The coming times are set to develop hybrid business environments wherein big data would be processed in real time within milliseconds, enabling smart decision making in seconds. This the future of technology and it is here to stay.
About the Author
Andrea Laura is a very creative writer and active contributor who love to share informative news or updates on various topics and brings great information to her readers. Being writing as her hobby, Andrea has come out with many interesting topics and information that attracts readers to unravel her write-up. Her content is featured on many mainstream sites & blogs.
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