What is Big Data ?
Big data (also spelled Big Data) is a general term used to describe the voluminous amount of unstructured and semi-structured data a company creates -- data that would take too much time and cost too much money to load into a relational database for analysis. Although Big data doesn't refer to any specific quantity, the term is often used when speaking about petabytes and exabytes of data. To clarify matters, the three Vs of volume, velocity and variety are commonly used to characterize different aspects of big data. Big data is being enabled by inexpensive storage, a proliferation of sensor and data capture technology, increasing connections to information via the cloud and virtualized storage infrastructures, and innovative software and analysis tools. Big data is not a "thing" but instead a dynamic/activity that crosses many IT borders. IDC defines it this way: Big data technologies describe a new generation of...