Big Data has become a part of the everyday business; however, it is not without its challenges. A report from Gartner found that only 15% of businesses were able to navigate their Big Data projects to production, with the majority not making it past the pilot phase. This report clearly shows that organizations are finding it challenging to manage and implement Big data project strategies.
Firstly, let’s just summarize what qualifies as Big Data. Big Data can vary for every business, most experts define it under the three Vs Volume, Velocity, and Variety. It is clear to see from the table how these three characteristics can cause challenges for growing businesses. Here are the top 4 challenges that occur.
| Characteristics | |
| Volume | Big data requires big storage space, this requires companies to continually be scaling up their ability to accommodate this increase. |
| Velocity | New data is being generated constantly and companies need to respond to this in real-time. |
| Variety | Data is generated in a wide variety of different forms; text, images, spreadsheets etc. |
1. Managing Big Data Growth
It is estimated that the amount of data stored in the world’s IT systems is doubling every two years. Companies are looking to supporting technologies to help them manage and store their ever-growing data needs. Such technologies can help businesses compress their data and consequently their data storage costs. Companies are using tools such as Hadoop, Spark and many more to help overcome this challenge.
2. Generating Real-Time Insights
Within this Big data is information that can be used for business growth and development. Businesses can find ways to decrease expenses, accelerate the speed of production and the capabilities of their service and discover opportunities for new products or services. To keep this data relevant companies are looking to analytical tools that are able to generate reports in real-time, such as Tableau, Microstrategy, Microsoft Power BI, Pentaho, IBM Cognos, SAP BusinessObjects just to name a few.
3. Keeping Big Data Secure
Data protection has always been taken seriously, however, with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 every business is having to review it’s current data protection policies. Alongside safeguarding individual’s privacy businesses have to look at protecting access to this Big Data through identity and access control, data encryption and data segregation.
4. Big Data Talent
It is evident that the data generated by businesses is vital for business growth and development. To get the most out of this data you need to have expertise in managing, analyzing, safeguarding and reporting. The new generation of data management tools requires the expertise of a Big data specialist. These specialists can help companies choose the most appropriate software, develop, manage, run the applications and train staff on analytics and reporting.
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