Driving Big Data with Hadoop Technologies

2. What Is Big Data?

The world of computing is driven by data and can change the way we perceive and interact with the world. The data generated by the computing devices are generally stored in the conventional databases. The data have to be processed and analyzed effectively that is critical for ensuring decisions made on the introduction of new products, generating the quarterly reports, maintaining the relationships with the customers, manage their finances and thus understand about the world (LaValle, Hopkins, Lesser, Shockley, & Kruschwitz, 2010). In the telecom industry, call data records need to be analyzed for ensuring quality of service with the customers (Schroeck, Shockley, Smart, Romero-Morales, & Tufano, 2012 ; Banerjee, 2011). Another example is the online retail industry that keeps track of each click of browsing by the customers for ensuring smarter shipping and inventory decisions (Schroeck et. al., 2012). The Banking sector needs to keep track of both customer and financial details to ensure how money is managed and transferred (Hickins, 2013). Since, the internet has reached all round the globe, data is being generated from various sources such as blogs, social networking sites, videos, transactions of various businesses, sensors of traffic flow, GPS information from satellites and so on the list continues with different characteristics termed as big data (Schroeck et. al., 2012). Big data spans over three basic characteristics namely volume, variety and velocity, commonly called as 3 V’s that provide a better view of different aspects of Big Data and the platforms available to exploit them.