Big data refers to the 21st-century phenomenon of exponential growth of business data, and the challenges that come with it, including holistic collection, storage, management, and analysis of all the data that a business owns or uses.
The term implies data of an indeterminate—and steadily increasing—size as well as from an indeterminate number of sources, including data generated by employees, customers, partners, machines, logs, databases, security cameras, mobile devices, social media, and more./p>
Big data is characterized by at least one, but usually all, of the following characteristics: massive volume, high velocity (rate of change), and widely varied type.
The amount of data being generated keeps increasing, so the challenge to contain big data is a moving target. Additionally, big data is increasingly a competitive problem: As more companies invest in, and have success with, their big data, those companies that do not keep step will be at great disadvantage. Finally, the technologies and commercial products to contain and control big data are evolving rapidly so IT organizations must stay alert to new innovations and opportunities.