Many things that seemed unimaginable in the past have been turned into reality by digital transformation and the explosion of Big Data.
Experts consider Big Data as the new energy that will power human lives and drive the digital economy in the future.
The more data a company collects and analyzes effectively, the better are its chances to stay ahead of the competition and deliver state-of-the-art products and services.
You can easily see Big Data analytics in action when you are watching your favorite video, checking your social media feed, or even selecting an insurance plan. There are millions of videos on YouTube and you can check how many people have viewed them over the years. Similarly, you can keep a track of the number of likes that you get on your posts, how many people follow you on Twitter, the number of downloads of any mobile application, reviews regarding any product on e-commerce sites, and so much more. Companies are collecting this massive amount of data and trying to better understand customer needs and achieve increased customer satisfaction through their offerings.
A great future awaits you if you are embarking on a career in Big Data. It is now common to see increased interest among professionals to dive into this fascinating career. Many of them are taking online data engineering courses to gain the right skills and improve their employability for a Big Data engineer role. Let us learn more about Big Data and how the future of Big Data looks like.
An Introduction to Big Data
Big Data is a term that refers to larger and complex data sets containing a greater variety and characterized by increasing volume and higher velocity. This massive amount of data can no longer be saved, processed, and analyzed using traditional database management tools. There are millions of data sources generating around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day which may be structured or unstructured. So Big Data analytics is all about the innovative form of information processing so that companies can draw valuable insights from it and enhance their decision-making process.
It is inevitable to come across the 3 Vs of Big Data when learning about this evolving field. Here’s a brief of what the 3 Vs depict:
- Volume – It refers to the amount of data, i.e. the quantity measured in terabytes, petabytes, etc.
- Velocity – It refers to the rate at which data is received or how fast the modern data changes.
- Variety – It refers to the type of data collected i.e. structured, semi-structured, or unstructured. Data in the form of image, audio, and video come under unstructured data.
Apart from these, two other characteristics of Big Data have evolved over the past few years:
- Veracity – It refers to the accuracy of the data collected. Companies gather data from disparate data sources and need to verify their quality before using it for business purposes.
- Value – Since companies gather an unprecedented amount of data, they need to understand how useful it is in making more informed decisions.
What Does the Future Hold for Big Data?
Different industrial sectors are using Big Data to offer sophisticated business solutions for their customers. Manufacturing, education, healthcare, stock markets, aviation, and transportation lead in harnessing the power of Big Data. These sectors offer various job opportunities in the field of Big Data like Big Data engineer, Hadoop developer, data analyst, machine learning engineer, and business intelligence analyst.
If the Frost & Sullivan report regarding the global Big Data analytics market is to be believed, then it is expected to grow 4.5 times by the year 2025. The Big Data analytics market which garnered a revenue of $14.85 billion in 2019 is expected to generate a revenue of $68.09 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 28.9%. The growth of the Big Data universe is majorly driven by the increased adoption of cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT).
The powerful combination of AI and machine learning is being used by companies to transform the unwieldy Big Data into an approachable stack. This would enable businesses to witness the algorithmic magic through applications like pattern recognition, fraud detection, video analytics, dynamic pricing, and more. Analytics-driven organizations are also leveraging AI to enhance data quality.
The IT industry is now highly interested in fragmented, widely distributed data structures created by incorrectly formatted data. This is the reason the number of databases for a wide variety of data types has increased significantly over the years to promote the meaningful synthesis of data. The combination of data synthesis and data analysis will further promote the effective usage of data.
You must have heard about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud that offer various cloud services. Using them, companies don’t need to install software or other applications to use them on premise, they can be accessed over the internet. These offerings are generally divided into Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Now the recent trend in the Big Data industry is Data as a Service (DaaS). It is a cloud service that helps companies store and manage data by compiling it into relevant streams. With DaaS, companies can reduce storage and management costs and enhance their quality.
What Next?
With such a promising future, Big Data can be an ideal career for you to pursue. Even experienced professionals can make a switch into this field by gaining relevant skills. One of the best ways to learn Big Data is enrolling in a data engineering training course. A reputed training program will teach you all the important Big Data concepts including types of analytics, programming languages like Python and R, data manipulation using SQL, Big Data frameworks like Hadoop and Apache Spark, and MongoDB. So, when are you taking this important career step?
