Big Data Archives - Page 10 of 10

Big Data Plays an Increasingly Bigger Role for Companies

By emeadows
March 12, 2013

Companies have access to more information than ever before, often from a wide range of sources and generated nearly immediately. Determining how to put Big Data to work has become a major theme for many businesses. The term gets linked to large-scale information companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon, but all sorts of businesses are beginning to make Big Data a central focal point in their strategies. Continue reading Big Data Plays an Increasingly Bigger Role for Companies

Watson Takes to the Kitchen: First Step Toward Big Data?

By emeadows
March 4, 2013

Watson — the computer running IBM’s artificial intelligence technology, famous for beating “Jeopardy” champions two years ago — will soon enter the kitchen in an attempt by the company to turn Watson into a commercially viable product. And it’s not only cooking; IBM is showcasing various uses for the technology, such as developing drugs and predicting when industrial machines need maintenance. Continue reading Watson Takes to the Kitchen: First Step Toward Big Data?

Ayasdi Uses New Topological Approach to Big Data Analysis

By ETCentric
January 22, 2013

Stanford mathematics professor Gunnar Carlsson’s startup Ayasdi uses topological data analysis to better understand huge sets of data. While other companies focus on handling queries, Carlsson’s approach analyzes the shape of data and identifies patterns and clusters. These clusters help people to understand the larger picture of the big data analysis, as the clusters can represent segments of customers or patients, for example. Continue reading Ayasdi Uses New Topological Approach to Big Data Analysis

Trends for 2013: Internet of Things, The Cloud, Big Data and More

By Karla Robinson
December 11, 2012

David Alan Grier, professor at George Washington University and president-elect for the IEEE Computer Society, suggests five ways the computing world will change in the coming year.

1) “New companies and applications will bring the long-held vision of the Internet of Things closer to reality,” Grier writes for Forbes. By 2020, there will be an estimated 100 billion Internet-connected objects, triggering “an explosion of new uses by consumers and enterprises alike,” he predicts. “New types of sensors, new ways of connecting devices, and new strategies for embedded computing must be rolled out to bring IoT’s vision to the forefront.”

2) “Visualization and analytics will help solve the challenges of big data.” More and more data is collected and generated than ever before, but analyzing big data has become a significant challenge. Federal agencies and large corporations have launched research programs to address the problem of overwhelming or quickly outdated data.

3) “Enterprises will deploy hybrid clouds and consumers will embrace personal clouds.” Looking for energy-saving green approaches, companies will increase the demand for cloud computing; cloud interoperability and standards will also advance.

4) “The battle over Internet censorship and control will reach new heights,” Grier writes. “In 2013, expect to see these battles continuing, in the form of Internet filtering versus circumvention, surveillance versus anonymization, denial-of-service attacks and intrusion attempts versus protection mechanisms, and on- and offline persecution and defense of online activists.”

5) “Researchers and companies will develop new tools and approaches to help unleash the power of multicore computing,” which will be a “critical priority” in the age of parallel processing.

Big Data Predictions for 2015: Are We Ready to Manage 8 Zettabytes?

By Karla Robinson
November 18, 2011

CenturyLink has released an infographic illustrating that 1.8 zettabytes of data will be created this year — and by 2015, that number will be 7.9 (equal to 18 million times the digital assets in the Library of Congress).
By the end of 2012, 50 percent of consumer Internet traffic will be devoted to video, making the largest contribution to the data boom. However, in 2015, most of the traffic will come from wireless devices.
Much of the data produced by consumers is “shadow data,” things like search history.
The infographic also details resource growth and notes “even as IT costs are dropping, capital expenditures are rising.”
“Naturally, enterprises hold most of the data, whether it’s created by consumers or by knowledge workers on company time,” reports ReadWriteWeb. “That’s a lot of responsibility for managing data: What’s your company’s data strategy to handle the incoming deluge of data?”

Will Big Data Help Shape the Next Market Winners and Losers?

By Karla Robinson
October 3, 2011

Forrester Research defines big data as “techniques and technologies that make handling data at extreme scale affordable.” The research firm estimates that companies effectively utilize less than 5 percent of available data, and further suggests that big data will help companies use information to dominate the competition in their market.
“It seems that every week another vendor slaps ‘big data’ into its marketing material – and it’s going to get worse,” writes Forrester analyst Brian Hopkins for Forbes. “Should you look beyond the vendor hype and pay attention? Absolutely yes! Why? Because big data has the potential to shape your market’s next winners and losers.”
Big data is not only concerned with the volume of information but also in velocity, variety and variability of data, since “data is usually generated so fast that you need to constantly capture more of it to be valuable for some decisions.”
The write-up in Forbes is promoting Forrester’s new report, “Expand Your Digital Horizon With Big Data.” From the executive summary: “At extreme scale, traditional data management and business intelligence (BI) become impractical, and your business does not get what it demands — more insight to drive greater business performance. Big data helps firms work with extremes to deliver value from data cost-effectively.
However CIOs must understand that this is not business as usual. In fact, big data will disrupt the data management landscape by changing fundamental notions about data governance and IT delivery. Take the time to understand big data as well as its implications and begin a balanced approach that considers more than just the technology hype.”