Big Data Computing Applications - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 442

far exceed all the data generated in human history. The Web, where all these
data are being produced and reside, consists of millions of servers, with data
storage soon to be measured in zettabytes.
Cloud computing provides the opportunity for organizations with limited
internal resources to implement large-scale big data computing applications
in a cost-effective manner. The fundamental challenges of big data com-
puting are managing and processing exponentially growing data volumes,
significantly reducing associated data analysis cycles to support practical,
timely applications, and developing new algorithms that can scale to search
and process massive amounts of data. The answer to these challenges is a
scalable, integrated computer systems hardware and software architecture
designed for parallel processing of big data computing applications. This
chapter explores the challenges of big data computing.
21.1.1 What Is Big Data?
Big data can be defined as volumes of data available in varying degrees of
complexity, generated at different velocities and varying degrees of ambi-
guity, which cannot be processed using traditional technologies, processing
methods, algorithms, or any commercial off-the-shelf solutions.
Data defined as big data include weather; geospatial and GIS data;
consumer-driven data from social media; enterprise-generated data from
legal, sales, marketing, procurement, finance, and human-resources depart-
ment; and device-generated data from sensor networks, nuclear plants, x-ray
and scanning devices, and airplane engines.
21.1.1.1 Data Volume
The most interesting data for any organization to tap into today are social
media data. The amount of data generated by consumers every minute pro-
vides extremely important insights into choices, opinions, influences, con-
nections, brand loyalty, brand management, and much more. Social media
sites provide not only consumer perspectives but also competitive posi-
tioning, trends, and access to communities formed by common interest.
Organizations today leverage the social media pages to personalize market-
ing of products and services to each customer.
Every enterprise has massive amounts of e-mails that are generated by its
employees, customers, and executives on a daily basis. These e-mails are all
considered an asset of the corporation and need to be managed as such. After
Enron and the collapse of many audits in enterprises, the US government
mandated that all enterprises should have a clear life-cycle management of
e-mails and that e-mails should be available and auditable on a case-by-case
basis. There are several examples that come to mind like insider trading,
intellectual property, competitive analysis, and much more, to justify gover-
nance and management of e-mails.