Page 7 - Building Big Data Applications

P. 7

Big Data introduction

This chapter will be a brief introduction to Big Data, providing readers the history, where
are we today, and the future of data. The reader will get a refresher view of the topic.
The world we live in today is ﬂooded with data all around us, produced at rates that
we have not experienced, and analyzed for usage at rates that we have heard as re-
quirements before and now can fulﬁll the request. What is the phenomenon called as
“Big Data” and how has it transformed our lives today? Let us take a look back at history,
in 2001 when Doug Laney was working with Meta Group, he forecasted a trend that will
create a new wave of innovation and articulated that the trend will be driven by the
three V’s namely volume, velocity, and variety of data. In the continuum in 2009, he
wrote the ﬁrst premise on how “Big Data” as the term was coined by him will impact the
lives of all consumers using it. A more radical rush was seen in the industry with the
embracement of Hadoop technology and followed by NoSQL technologies of different
varieties, ultimately driving the evolution of new data visualization, analytics, story-
boarding,and storytelling.

In a lighter vein, SAP published a cartoon which read the four words that Big Data
brings d“Make Me More Money”
This is the confusion we need to steer clear of and be ready to understand how to
monetize from Big Data.
First to understand how to build applications with Big Data, we need to look at Big
Data from both the technology and data perspectives.

Big Data delivers business value

The e-Commerce market has shaped businesses around the world into a competitive
platform where we can sell and buy what we need based on costs, quality, and prefer-
ence. The spread of services ranges from personal care, beauty, healthily eating, clothing,

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12