In the current digital ecosystem, around 40% of the world population have internet communication, which encompass nearly 3 billion internet users and 15 billion connecting devices, generating an enormous amount of structured and unstructured data, this huge volume of data includes social media content, business transactions and real time market information, organizations across the globe are emphasizing on capturing and analyzing this data for better decision making and significant edge in market competitiveness. One of the pioneer market intelligence firm IDC, termed this immense volume of data as digital universe and state that this ocean of data set will upsurge to 8 zeta bytes by 2015.
Big data is a disruptive force, which proposes both opportunities and challenges to various organizations. A study conducted by global research company, McKenzie established that data is as critical as labor and capital to an organization. If organizations can effectively capture, analyze and apply BIG DATA acuity to their business goals, they can improve the business forecast, better decision making, deciding business strategy over their competitors and outperform in terms of operational efficiency, customer service and make speed a differentiator.
What is Big Data?
Big Data refers to data sets so large and complex, that it is impractical to manage with conventional technologies and skill sets, the data is prodigious in terms of volume, velocity and variety.
Volume – Large volume of data from all possible sources.
Variety – Diverse data sets which include not only numbers and texts, but also geospatial data, logo files and other forms of structured, semi structured and unstructured content.
Velocity – Real-time high momentum data sets, including stock market updates, clickstreams, online gaming support etc.
Organizations across domains requires technology tools that are agile, interoperable, reliable and most importantly, cost effective to achieve operational excellence and respond to market dynamics. There are numerous commercially available Big Data technology solutions to cater data management requirements, but these solutions are high on license and maintenance cost and require specific skill sets to implement. To enable better use of resources and reduce total cost of ownership, Open source Big Data technologies play an important role, not only it provide fast turnaround time, but also offers the freedom to choose platform , improve IT application adaptability and flexibility, thus reduce operational cost.
Open source technology is a multi-billion dollar market, Here, we will look at some of the most promising open source Big Data technology providers and how there are transforming the nature and use of the DATA.