Big Data - why you can ignore it

Big Data is a buzz word that I believe can be happily ignored. It is yet another technical term that has been corrupted by the masses and so loose its meaning. This corruption itself does not concern me, however the concept that Big Data is in some way better than ordinary every day Data is frustrating as the opportunities of data lie in what you do with it rather than how much of it you've got.

Big data is a general term around very very large data sets and the technology to manage this data, hopefully resulting in some useful application of this vast, constantly changing ocean of stuff. When you think Big Data you will think of the challenges of Google searching trillions of constantly changing web pages and all the different types of data they may contain. Google have an index over 100 million Giga Bytes in size and this index is accessed every time someone runs a simple search. Needless to say the vast majority of businesses do not have direct access to, or indeed any reason to want to access, Big Data.

Big Data has changed the world. Our happiness to post every thought and whim on Social media means that we reveal to the world a very intimate portrait of ourselves. It is not just the Big Data companies that have access this, through the use of a simple Google search everyone can view and extract value from this sea of information.

The challenge therefore is perhaps as it always has been. The data is the starting point and the challenge is to extract value from this. We are still looking for needles in haystacks but now the haystack is a whole lot bigger.

Shane McCusker runs Intelligence Software developing software for recruiters to help find candidates and make placements. Check out Shanes Recruitment blog for ideas on sourcing and recruitment technology. https://www.intel-sw.com