Big Data & Cloud Computing – Made for each other

Big Data is basically sets of data which are large in volume and cannot be processed through some traditional application software. The term big data is not new as it has been around since a long time and there has been many concepts related to the term. Even if the concept is not new in the industry, there is a lot of confusion revolving the true meaning of what big data actually is. When you work on a particular principle and start collecting knowledge on the similar, you start generating data which will be useful for you in the future to analyze the data and get further insights. Before computers and the rise of internet, the transactions were recorded on paper and archive files which were fundamentally data. Today computers allow us to save whatever data we have on spreadsheets and organize them in the most efficient way.

Since the emergence of cloud computing, it has offered the best technology with a wide range of applications for various purposes in the most cost effective way. It is almost like a match made in heaven for big data and cloud computing because there is a lot of data and only cloud computing can provide that kind of compute power to process the data. Whatever we do almost leaves a digital trail as we generate data whenever we are on the internet. As cloud computing is transforming IT, huge amount of compute power is needed with the help of internet to store and analyze this data. Cloud computing has brought such a change that it has reshaped the way computers are being used to process data. Cloud has made it very simple for data storage in comparison with traditional data storage. Cloud computing provides scalable resources on demand and it has changed the way data is stored and processed. This is a powerful approach to analyze data provided by cloud computing and has become vital in the growth of big data in multiple industries.

The full potential of what cloud computing can offer is not yet been realized due to lack of expertise and thus many enterprises fail to realize what can be achieved through cloud computing. Due to not implementing ‘Big Data’ in businesses in the way it should be, organizations are not growing because of not analyzing the data available to them. Combination of big data and cloud computing will help organizations in business analytics and will also improve their decision making in important parts of the business.

The world can benefit from this combo and can have huge analytics advantage to generate information which is ideal for business continuity. Let’s take a look at the opportunities organizations can achieve by combining big data and cloud computing:

Agility

The traditional systems have proved to be slower since storing data and managing it is time consuming and is a tedious process. Since the adoption of cloud by organizations, it has been providing all the resources to run multiple virtual servers in cloud database seamlessly within matter of minutes.

Affordability

Organizations have a budget when they wish to switch to a particular technology and in this case, cloud is a blessing which is a top technology under a budget. Companies can choose the services they want according to their business and budget requirements. Applications and resources which are needed to manage big data don’t cost much and can be implemented by enterprises. Only pay for the amount of storage space you use and no additional charges will be incurred.

Data processing

Apache Hadoop is a big data analytics platform which processes structured and unstructured data. Social media alone generates a lot of data from blogs, posts, videos and photos which is difficult to analyze under a single category. Cloud takes care of the rest by making the whole process easy and accessible to any enterprise.

Feasibility

Traditional solutions require extra physical servers in the cluster for maximum processing power and storage space but the virtual nature of the cloud allows to allocate resources on demand. Scaling is a great option to get the desired processing power and storage space whenever required. Big data requires high data processing platform for analytics and there can be variations in demand which would be satisfied by only the cloud environment.

Challenges to Big Data in the Cloud environment

1.    Big Data generates huge amounts of data and it is complicated to manage this amount of data on a traditional system. It is also difficult to analyze this data on the cloud platform to extract only the important bits.

2.    While moving large sets of data, there is often sensitive information like credit and debit card details/ addresses which is a major security concern.

3.    Businesses face high security concerns when they have their data on cloud. Attackers seem to come up with new ways to breach into the system which dents a company’s reputation and leads to cloud abuse.

4.    Replication of data is vital in case of an event where there are chances of losing data. Analysis of data is not possible in such case.

Conclusion

Big Data and Cloud Computing is a fit combination which allows processing of huge amounts of data on a platform which is scalable and will meet the resources needed to analyze data. Obviously there are opportunities and challenges when it comes these 2 technologies but isn’t that a part of the IT field?