The Internet and ever-emerging technologies have created the omnipresence of data around the world, and maybe even the universe, as people and machines can now communicate with each other from the earth to the moon and vice versa. The management and storage of overwhelming Big Data has become a challenge for both IT developers and end users. IT scientists saw a logical solution: cloud computing.
Why should businesses depend on the cloud for the management of the massive data at their disposal? What important technology trends must they consider to achieve a competitive edge?
Mobility is encompassing the world
International Data Corporation (IDC), a premier global market intelligence firm, forecasts that the world’s mobile worker sector will reach a 1.3 billion population in 2015 or account for more than 37 percent of the total global workforce.
With mobility trends transcending geographic and cultural boundaries, the need for an effective cloud strategy is even more crucial for businesses. On the one hand, mobile workers prefer to perform their tasks on the road or from remote locations at the point of need using their own devices. On the other hand, enterprises want to be always connected to their workforce and organization.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is creating data, data, and more data
In a recent article, Cisco CEO John Chambers called the IoT “the most fundamental change” among current technology trends and considers it “the second generation of the Internet.” With Big Data becoming increasingly pervasive, the IT world is seeing the emergence of IoT solutions in new generation cloud platforms.
There is an interesting relationship between the IoT and cloud computing with the ability to connect living and non-living “things.” For instance, sensors that can be operated remotely can be installed such things as refrigerators, television sets, thermostats, cars, cows, and trees to make them function more intelligently.
The social web is connecting the dots faster
Tweeting, liking, tagging, linking, friending, messaging, or simply viewing are just a few of the social media activities that are adding to the explosion of Big Data. Many users are not even aware that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, YouTube, and e-mail are all essentially connected to the cloud.
The social web and cloud resources can be integrated into enterprise networks for improved business collaboration. A sales team may be better able to work together to achieve sales goals using social networking technologies, while accessing important data and support from enterprise data centers.
Big Data analytics allow for more informed choices and decisions
The potential in Big Data is not in its bigness, but in its ability to identify and solve business problems and open new opportunities. With the proper analytics tools, businesses can have answers to why customers are leaving, what products customers are likely to buy, or what the value of a “like” or a “tweet” is.
Big Data is only as good as the actionable knowledge and insights businesses derive from them. Cloud-based analytics helps unleash the hidden promise of untouched data in jumbled traditional databases. It enables organizations to process large volumes of data to determine which data is relevant and can be used to drive better business decisions.
It is, thus, clear that Big Data and cloud computing are taking on a convergent path. More and more modern businesses are realizing that the limitlessness of structured and unstructured data is influencing the way they do business. They also know that Big Data will remain to be useless data if business decision makers do not use it properly and quickly.