What is Big Data? - Simple Explanation

Big Data, as the name suggests is a name given to 'huge amount of data'. Let me offer a simple explanation of what it means and why it's relevant in today's IT world.

Let's understand it with an easy to understand and familiar example: Facebook. As you know, at any point of time hundreds of thousands of people are logged in to Facebook from their computers and mobile app. These people are liking posts, uploading and forwarding photos, uploading videos and sharing information. All of this results into Facebook's servers receiving huge amount of data (called Big Data) on continuous basis.

Facebook must be able to properly analyse this 'big data' and use it. It therefore relies on the set of new tools and technologies that help them manage such huge amount of data.

In the IT world, Big Data now a days exists everywhere. Several IT companies are now offering services and products that offer effective management of this data and help the companies make business sense out of it.

Let's take another example - Airport. A busy airport must maintain all the passenger and flight information and use it effectively. It must therefore have a system that processes all this data securely and effectively. The system must also be able to generate important statistics and help the authorities run the airport effectively. It must therefore rely on what we call 'Big Data'.

A research institute that deals with DNA analysis produces huge amount of data which it must store and process. Similarly, a big company that has thousands of employees and projects must also keep huge amounts of data in its system.

I hope this gives you an idea of what big data is and how it is important in IT. If you have questions, feel free to ask them below.

ankush0809

Can you help me to know about meaning of Big Data and what is role of Big data in IT Field?

Do you plan to use this technology and tools in the near future or you asked this from theoretical perspective only? Be specific.

Big Data include's 3 V's :Velocity,Volume and Versatality.
Any data which is increasing with much greater velocity which is not able to handle by traditional methods like tweets on twitter.
Volume:Like a security agency capturing all the information of his nation or All the World. i.e. NSA.
Versatality: Which is hugely versatile in nature.

Thanks dear for beautiful explanation. you mean, big data is huge amount of data receiving by users and services providers and IT plays the role to maintain it in systematically.

Hadoop one of the Big data.