Pros and Cons of Big Data

Big data has created a significant buzz in the IT industry over the last few years, and a big part of the discussion is about its application in businesses. 

One of the biggest advantages of Big Data is that it helps enterprises in streamlining their operations, improving efficiency, cutting costs and more!

However, like all technologies and general aspects of life, Big Data to comes with its own disadvantages. Due to the sheer volume and variability, it can be challenging to analyze and put Big Data to use.

This article will explore the advantages and disadvantages of big data and the challenges involved in Big Data analysis.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Big Data: What is Big Data?

In essence, big data consists of large and complex sets of information that are so voluminous that traditional data processing software can’t manage them. This information originates from a huge range of sources and can take a number of forms.

There are three types of Big Data.

Structured Data: The data obtained may be structured, in which case the information is readily presented in a table form (rows and columns), like a traditional relational database. 

Unstructured Data: The bulk of Big data usually consists of unstructured information, which can’t be easily represented or analyzed through conventional means. 

Semi-Structured Data: Contains both Structured and Unstructured Data forms. Web data, social media content, audio, video, and images are just some of the examples of information at this less structured end of the big data spectrum.

What are the Main Components of Big Data?: 5 Vs of Big Data

There are 5 important characteristics, commonly known as the 5 Vs of Big Data. The three core characteristics are as follows: three core.

• Volume: Big Data sets typically include significant amounts of low-density, unstructured information which, depending on the organization, may run from tens of terabytes to over a hundred petabytes.
• Variety: This information comes from a multiplicity of sources and can assume many types and formats. You may receive structured data from databases, and spreadsheets. You may also receive unstructured data from social media, emails, audio and videos.
• Velocity: Big data arrives at a fast rate, and for many applications must be processed and analyzed just as quickly — these days, often in real-time. Analyzing dynamic data allows for established decision-making and swift responses.

With the increasing use of big data in business, health, and infrastructure applications, two other characteristics have been added to the mix:

• Veracity: A measure of the accuracy and reliability of the information. Since Big Data is high in volume, it becomes increasingly important to identify where it’s coming from. If the data is incomplete, inaccurate or full of errors, then it will impact the decision made.
• Value: An assessment of what benefit possession and analysis of the data brings to an organization. Businesses can gain a competitive edge and improve operations through Big Data, but it’s important to determine just how far Big Data analysis can take you before jumping in.

The primary aim of storing, processing, and analyzing big data is to examine massive data sets to identify trends, patterns, and insights that may be used for various purposes. The advantages and disadvantages of Big Data stem from the basic understanding of how complex it is to carry out these tasks. 

To start with, let’s delve into the advantages of Big Data.

Opportunities to Make Better Decisions

When a lot of information is available in a form that organizations can readily manage and analyze, there’s a greater probability of discovering patterns and insights that can inform operational and strategic decisions.

By identifying patterns, correlations and trends, organizations can make informed and reliable decisions. You may gain a quick understanding of how your competitors are performing by using data-driven insights, which can provide you with a competitive edge in the market.

Increasing Productivity and Efficiency

With big data analytics tools enabling organizations to process more information at faster speeds, personal productivity levels for individual workers can increase, and the enterprise can gain access to information and insights about its own operations that enable management to recognize areas where the organization itself could be more productive.

Big Data may also be used to keep an eye on what your staff are doing, analyze that data, and spot trends. These patterns might assist you in figuring out how to simplify things for your employees.

Reducing Costs

Streamlining operations, improving efficiency, and increasing productivity by using big data can introduce significant cost savings to an enterprise and positively impact overall profitability. The use of big data in predictive or prescriptive analytics processes powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence generates further cost reductions. 

This can be through the identification of even more efficient ways of working or via mechanisms such as preventative maintenance and enhanced quality control management.

Improving Customer Service and Customer Experience

Technical support and Helpline services powered by big data, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) can greatly improve the standard of response and follow-up that organizations can give to their consumers. 

Responsible use and analysis of customer and transaction data enable organizations to personalize their outreach to individual consumers, leading to greater engagement with brands and more satisfying user or buyer experiences. 

With Big Data, organizations can create customized marketing campaigns and leverage targeted marketing, therefore increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Fraud and Anomaly Detection

In industries like financial services or healthcare, it’s just as important to know what’s going wrong as it is to know what’s going right. 

AI and machine learning systems with big data can easily detect erroneous transactions, fraudulent activity indicators, and anomalies in data sets that may point to various ongoing or potential issues.

Greater Agility and Speed to Market

One of the biggest advantages of Big Data is that developments in real-time processing of big data through stream analytics enable organizations to become more agile — both in their internal operations and product development, innovation, and speed to market.

Pros and Cons of Big Data – Understanding the Cons

Some of the disadvantages of big data include:

Questionable Data Quality

Data-driven decisions and operational strategies can only be as good as the quality of the underlying data sets and their resulting analysis. 

If the procured data is low in veracity, there’s a danger that the insights gleaned from the analytics might be worthless. In extreme cases, proceeding with the insights and assumptions produced may even prove to be harmful.

Heightened Security Risks

Most of the information that enterprises aggregate in a data lake includes sensitive records requiring special protection levels. This data represents a high-value target for cybercriminals and can earmark the organization as ripe for attack.

As an organization with high volumes of data, you must ensure robust security measures in place and systemise data accessibility to reduce security risks.

Compliance Headaches

Especially with information collected from consumers and healthcare patients, organizations must navigate an increasingly complex and strict environment of data privacy rules and regulatory compliance demands.

As big data volumes increase, storage, transmission, and data governance tasks become harder to manage.

Cost and Infrastructure Issues

Maintaining an on-premises infrastructure for big data management can be a complex and capital-intensive affair. Distributed storage and analytics hardware and infrastructure may be too expensive to purchase, manage, and maintain. 

Cloud-based analytics and big data management solutions offset this to some extent, but there are deployment and governance issues that enterprises must address even here.

Big Data Skills Shortage

To obtain full benefit from big data, organizations require data scientists and other big data professionals who know how to design, deploy, and manage infrastructure and achieve results from analytics. 

There’s currently a serious skills shortage in these areas, and even if the talent is available, salaries for big data professionals may be too high for the enterprise budget.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Big Data: Problems with Big Data in Healthcare

In addition to all of the above disadvantages, the use of big data in healthcare presents a specific range of problems. 

These include:

• Poor usability of electronic health records (EHR), convoluted workflows, and an incomplete understanding of why big data is important to capture can contribute to quality issues.
• The healthcare industry’s HIPAA Security Rule includes a long list of technical safeguards for organizations storing protected health information (PHI), increasing the pressure on providers to enforce transmission security, authentication protocols, and controls over access, integrity, and auditing.
• Anonymized data sets are often re-purposed for research projects, quality measurement, or performance benchmarking, making stewardship and curation an important and ongoing concern.

Big Data Challenges: What to Keep in Mind

At a fundamental level, big data’s sheer volume and characteristic nature make it challenging to store, manage, use, and analyze it. There are a few challenges involved in Big Data analysis, however, they’re just a part of the process and not necessarily disadvantages.

These challenges include:

Synchronizing Disparate Data Sources

With data sets becoming bigger and more diverse, analysts must face the challenge of properly incorporating them into an analytical platform. If this challenge isn’t met, there are dangers of inaccuracy and omission in the resulting insights.

Picking the Right Tools

Big data management and analysis require switching from relational databases to NoSQL or non-relational databases that can store, access, and process large and varied data sets rapidly and efficiently. 

The big data databases and tools in a growing market differ from each other in several respects and have their shortcomings, making the choice of applications difficult.

Problems with Scale

Big data projects grow and evolve over time, introducing a need to create an infrastructure that facilitates the addition and processing of fresh data sets. 

While cloud-based infrastructures can take care of this to some extent, some of the big data analytics solutions do not give optimal performance in the cloud.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Big Data: Maintaining Data Integrity, Security, and Privacy

Throughout the big data life cycle, organizations must implement a robust security strategy that enables them to collect, store, analyze, manage, and use large volumes of real-time data while eliminating the risk of data breaches and exposure. 

This big data security strategy must also be fluid enough to adapt to changing data privacy and regulatory compliance policies.

Establishing a system of defined roles, such as data ownership and access will help in maintaining Data Integrity in the long run. 

Organizations must also ensure the transmissions are encrypted, and that the cloud systems used for storage are well secured. 

These measures promise the ethical use of Big Data while maintaining data integrity, security and privacy.

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