Big Data: What does it consist of? Its importance, challenges and governance

Big Data is a term that describes the large volume of data, both structured and unstructured, that flood business every day. But it is not the amount of data that is important. What matters with Big Data is what organizations do with data. Big Data can be analyzed to get ideas that lead to better decisions and strategic business movements.

When we talk about Big Data, we mean data sets or combinations of data sets whose size (volume), complexity (variability) and speed of growth (speed) hinder their capture, management, processing or analysis using conventional technologies and tools, such as relational databases and conventional statistics or visualization packages, within the time necessary for them to be useful.Although the size used to determine if a given data set is considered Big Data is not firmly defined and continues to change over time, most analysts and professionals currently refer to data sets ranging from 30-50 Terabytes to several Petabytes

The complex nature of Big Data is mainly due to the unstructured nature of much of the data generated by modern technologies, such as web logs, radio frequency identification (RFID), sensors built into devices, machinery, vehicles , Internet searches, social networks such as Facebook, laptops, smartphones and other mobile phones, GPS devices and call center records.

In most cases, in order to effectively use Big Data, it must be combined with structured data (usually from a relational database) of a more conventional commercial application, such as an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or a CRM ( Customer Relationship Management).