WHAT IS BIG DATA?

In this era the most valuable & important commodity I know of is information. Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine. Let's know in detail about Big Data. 

Big data refers to the distributed, abundant and fractured volumes of data created by machines, software & people. It requires innovative, new and scalable technology to collect, store and analyze the vast amount of data generated to derive customer-relevant real-time business insights, risk, profit, performance, growth management and enhanced shareholder value. (Big data Changing the way companies compete and operate insights on governance, risk and compliance, 2014)

Big data is changing the way we operate when companies are facing growing amounts of data. Instead of eliminating a human worker or taking obsolete choices, big data can represent an enormous creative force for those employers who can use them.

The tools used for the management of Big Data are:

1)      Hadoop – The most widely used big data platform.

2)      Apache Spark

3)      Apache Storm

4)      Cassandra

5)      RapidMiner

6)      Neo4j.

The common issues faced by the tools are:

• Handling large amounts of data- With the rise in the amount of unstructured data, the number of data formats has also increased. Eg. Video, Audio, Social media, Data from smart devices. Some of the new ways to manage this issue is using a hybrid relational database in combination with the NoSQL database. (DATAVERSITY, 2018).
• Data security- The data reaching undertakings is made available from a wide variety of sources, some of which cannot be believed to be reliable and consistent with organizational norms. Such reports are made available from numerous sources and thus have potential security concerns. You may never realize which data source is corrupted, thus jeopardizing the integrity of the corporate data. (DATAVERSITY, 2018).
• Shortage of skilled people- There is a lack of experienced people and trained data scientists or data analysts available. Entry-level preparation can be costly for a new technology enterprise. Instead, many are working on automation solutions which require machine learning and artificial intelligence to gain insights. (DATAVERSITY, 2018)

The data collected about customers and their transactions, which are the greatest assets of e-commerce companies, needs to be used consciously for the benefits of the companies. Although the complexity and granularity of the mentioned challenges differ, e-commerce companies can overcome these problems by using and applying the right techniques by developing an e-commerce website in a way that search engines can read and access the latest version of the website. For such companies, big data plays a vital role in providing customer-oriented services to increase customer satisfaction. It has become apparent that utilizing big data tools is a necessity for e-commerce companies in this globally competitive environment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Big data Changing the way businesses compete and operate insights on governance, risk and compliance. (2014). [online] Available at: https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_-_Big_data:_changing_the_way_businesses_operate/$FILE/EY-Insights-on-GRC-Big-data.pdf [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

DATAVERSITY. (2018). Four Common Big Data Challenges - DATAVERSITY. [online] Available at: https://www.dataversity.net/four-common-big-data-challenges/# [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].

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