Big Data

We are a now generation. We don’t like waiting for anything, whether it’s our microwave dinner to finish, the red light to change, or our YouTube videos to buffer. Not surprisingly, this impatience translates easily from our personal lives right into our professional lives. What’s true at home is just as common in the office. For example, with smartphones and cloud computing, we expect to be able to communicate with anyone and access information from anywhere. Technology has increased our collaborative abilities, leading to quicker turnaround times, shorter deadlines and heightened expectations.

As part of any business, one must be concerned about how to manage all the data and applications that a part of an organization’s infrastructure especially with BYOD policies on the rise in both large and small companies. Part of that is a company’s storage system, which not only handles storing data but retrieving and processing it. Years ago, this could be accomplished mostly through traditional storage options like hard disk drives (HDD), but these methods have proven to be ineffective as business demands have evolved with changing technologies.

Almost 50% of businesses today are using big data to optimize their talent recruiting procedures - and why shouldn't they? After all, the information is readily available. And companies that are hungry for skilled employees need a streamlined way to find people who can fill open positions, including highly skilled positions like engineers and programmers.

The world of e-commerce is tough, and it’s only going to get tougher as more and more companies shift away from traditional brick and mortar stores and go with online enterprises. Because of the increase in competition and products offered, it’s more important than ever that companies get their marketing strategies right. And in a world filled with so much noise from email, social media, apps and the like, that too is getting more and more difficult. Not only is it harder than ever to get a customer's attention, but it’s also harder than ever to keep them coming back to your site/store. With big data technology and programs like Hadoop Hive, however, it’s becoming much easier.

Giving Brands the Power to Realize the Promise of Big Data and Deliver Smarter, More Relevant Customer Experiences through the Acquia Platform

BOSTON – November 4, 2014 – Acquia, the digital experience company, today introduced Acquia Lift ContextDB, the latest addition to its suite of Digital Engagement Services for the optimization of digital experiences. ContextDB is a petabyte-scale data warehouse solution that finally delivers on the long-sought ideal of automating data-driven, context-aware customer experiences.

The implementation of big data has proven to increase a company’s ROI by as much as ten to 20 percent depending on the metrics used. Productivity can also increase by five percent and lead to six percent higher profits than other competitors. Enterprises not using big data in their operations are missing out on the benefits that come from increased data gathering and analytics.

Why marketing teams have not become data-driven

In today’s digital world big data almost sounds like an over prescribed medication. A company has revenue struggles? Use big data. Another needs more marketing ROI? Big data. But really, we have only scratched the surface of utilizing big data to its full, practical potential. Big data is a metaphorical iceberg, with the portion above water being structured data and the massive portion below the surface being unstructured data. The challenge for companies today is tackling unstructured data to unlock the full potential of big data computing and analytics.

When people think of big data, they naturally assume that it’s just about gathering large amounts of information to provide more accurate searches online and help companies provide more targeted advertisements and marketing efforts. They’re both right and wrong. True, there is so much more to big data than just marketing and advertising. It’s effects are now being seen in numerous industries across the globe. It’s solving world problems and improving the quality of life for millions of individuals.

While the overall job market may still be struggling, for those in the field of big data, the opportunities are plentiful. We’re currently in the middle of a big data boom, where companies of all shapes and sizes are finding ways to use big data to grow and be more successful than ever before. Businesses are in the hunt for people that possess the right skills for big data jobs that have been rapidly emerging in recent years. Higher education is also responding, instituting programs and new degrees to keep up with the demand. In a field that is still ripe with innovation, changes are expected to happen on a fairly regular basis.

Companies from the cosmetics industry to pet food are finding better ways to interact with customers, improve services and identify new markets through the capabilities they gain from using big data technology, like Google Compute Engine. Google Compute Engine allows companies to run extremely large workloads in the cloud, making big data more affordable and efficient to use than ever before. With this type of technology, companies are able to gather and store more data and, more importantly, they can take that data and perform dynamic queries and analyses that yield real-time results.