Big Data: Future Predictions

Big data is voluminous and complex data sets which are difficult to deal with traditional data-processing application software. There are five concepts associated with big data: volume, variety, velocity and, the recently added, veracity and value. The challenges faced by big data include capturing data, data storage, data analysis, search, sharing, transfer, visualization, querying, updating, information privacy and data source.

The world's technological per-capita capacity to store information has increased exponentially to a level that cannot be easily understandable. Database management systems, statistics and software packages have been finding it difficult to manage big data. Human beings created voluminous data in past couple of years than in the entire history of human kind. Such an exponential increase in big data has taken the world by storm and there are no inferences of slowing down. And we have no idea what is coming in future?

With big data are coming many challenges related to privacy and security of data and what are the up gradations in the technology trends with the evolution of big data. There will be more demand for people who can deal with data, who are data scientists. Mechanization would increase and the jobs existing now will become obsolete, the jobs will revolve around handling of big data and ethical violations related to big data. Machine learning would be a top strategic trend. New and new ways would come up to handle and analyze data. There will be increase in demand of algorithms instead of software packages. There would be a shift in businesses in all terms: be it production, service, and the ways to handle data. More and more research would be conducted to develop analytical tools for handling of data. Businesses would be basically focusing on predictive analytics.

With the advancement in big data would come talent crunch and staffing function will be of great concern. There would be more demand of experts and scientists in data management. Businesses encompassing data will benefit in increase in productivity compared to the businesses not involving data. ‘Fast data’ and ‘actionable data’ will replace big data. The data analyzed from which some inferences can be drawn will be more relied upon to fasten the process of decision making. Total revenues from big data, big data analytics and tools related to the same will rise. Investments in big data technologies will touch the sky. The role of developers will also change. Their role would be in inventing technologies and applications that can play around with the big data.

What I see in the future is, big data is going to get bigger and bigger and businesses ignoring it will be left behind. Having tremendous amounts of data will not give you a competitive advantage over your competitors but how effectively and quickly you analyze the data and extract actionable information from it will. Time is the only solution to the problem discussed above. Time will only decide which the above prediction will prevail and which will become obscure.

Ms Saloni Kalra

Assistant Professor

Department of Management Studies