The Opportunities and Challenges of Cloud Computing and Big Data

Big data is a general term that is used to refer to all kinds of data that exist in the current world of business. From digital data and records for healthcare facilities to the massive paperwork in government agencies which is archived for future references, technology has given us a service-oriented architecture to analyze such information for our own good. Big data can never be categorized under one description or definition because experts are still devising ways through which more benefits can be derived from it. The beautiful thing about information technology is that it consistently evolves and is always available for companies that are willing to embrace it. On the other hand, the development of cloud computing made it easier for business enterprises to get technology in packages that are affordable. The cost of storing company information was significantly reduced by use of cloud computing which also came with multiple applications that can be utilized by small business enterprises.

After the birth of the internet about a decade ago, there has been an explosion of a wide array of information in the world wide web as cloud computing continues to develop steadily. Both the standard users and digital marketers can now generate loads of information about the consumer using social media marketing platforms on a daily basis. Sometimes, it has become quite an uphill task for institutions and business organizations to manage the amount of data that they generate and store on a daily basis. For instance, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is being created daily which may present a storage and sorting challenge to cloud computing.

This is where big data comes in to manage how such colossal amounts of data are stored through cloud computing. Together, these two forms of technology offer a solution which is both accommodating and scalable for business analytics and big data. In this article, we are going to highlight how big data and cloud computing can be used together to manage the enormous amounts of data that is being generated on a daily basis by government institutions and business organizations.

Affordability

For any business enterprise or government agency that is planning to have their technology updated on a tight budget, cloud technology may be a blessing in disguise. Institutions and organizations can have what they urgently need without paying a fortune while they continue to enjoy the benefits. The resources that are used to manage big data are within the budgets of even the smallest of companies and are also readily available in the market. Before the advent of cloud computing, business organizations and government agencies spent big bucks to set up information technology departments to manage their data and even paid more to update those IT systems. Today, thanks to technological advancements, firms can have their big data hosted on servers that are off-site or pay for their hourly power requirements and storage space to cloud computing service providers.

Agility

The traditional methods of data storage and management are becoming harder to manage since they are very slow and it takes the company lots of time to retrieve information from them. Sometimes, installing and running a server may take weeks or even months. Fortunately, the advent of cloud computing has the potential to give your business enterprise or government agency all the storage requirements that you need. A company database that is based on cloud computing can be installed in a matter of minutes and have your data stored in thousands of virtual servers where it can easily be accessible to someone with just a computer or a mobile device and internet connection.

Data processing

The explosion of vast amounts of data comes with the challenge of managing it. For instance, social media generates enormous amounts of data that proves challenging to process it in one category like tweets, Posts, blogs, and photos. With big data, there are analytic platforms such as Apache Hadoop that can handle unstructured data before storing it in the cloud.