The impact of IoT on big data

What is big data?

Big data is a catchphrase that is mostly used in business, as well as the technology world. Big data is a vast of amount of data which is generated by connected technology.

Simply put, it is a large set of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that is analyzed to get insights about business trends. The business world defines big data as a tool to make operations, marketing and advertising efforts more effective.

What is IoT?

IoT is nothing more than a system of physical objects connected via the internet. The “things” in IoT can refer to any device that is assigned an IP address. This device or thing transfers data via the internet and without any manual intervention.

The connection between IoT and big data

Since the number of connected devices is growing at a rapid pace, it won’t be surprising to hear that by 2020 there will be more than 10 billion devices and sensors interconnected via the internet. And all these devices, according to a study, will generate around 4.4 trillion GB of data.

Now, there is no doubt that all this data will be difficult to comprehend. However, organizations are already getting ahold of this data through IoT for analysis purposes. And this is where the role of IoT in big data comes into the picture.

We all know that IoT holds great potential for business advancements, but at the same time, it also presents a couple of challenges as well.

Here are the best ways for businesses to meet those challenges head-on:

More data means businesses will need to re-strategize their data center infrastructure
To use IoT data, businesses must invest in long-term IT planning. Why? Because the abundance of data created by IoT will put more pressure on existing networks and therefore businesses will require more power to process it.

In simple terms, before your data analyst can even use IoT data, first it needs to be aggregated and organized, which, by the way, will not be an easy task.

So, whether you’re a product company gathering data from smartphone apps and wearables or an enterprise processing data from manufacturing equipment and sensors, the upgrade to a better data center infrastructure will be inevitable.

NoSQL databases will become mainstream for IoT data
As discussed, more data will mean the need for more places to aggregate that data. Moreover, since most of this IoT data will not be structured, it won’t be easy to sort it into tables using a relational database management system (RDBMS). Therefore, the best possible systems for this will be NoSQL databases and cloud-computing platforms like MongoDB, Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Hadoop.

Unlike RDBMSes, these cloud-based computing platforms can offer the flexibility a business with vast data needs to organize in a way that makes the data usable.

The need for more — and more skilled — data analysts will rise
To make the most from the vast amount of data it has collected, your business will need more skilled data analysts. In simple terms, you’ll need to have the right people in your organization to analyze and make your business data into valuable insights.

This can be achieved through data infrastructure and processing, data learning, data mining, machine learning and complex event processing.

But before your data scientists can turn IoT data into valuable business insights, you’ll also need to have the right software stack in place to help them analyze the data. This is where tools like Hadoop’s pig component and analytics tools like Apache Storm come into picture. These tools help big time in preprocessing and analyzing IoT data.

With IoT, big data will offer quality, actionable data
There will be 4.4 trillion GB of data generated by 2020, but the problem is, what will be the key to all this data? Businesses that are collecting data from devices and sensors will soon likely have more data than they know what to do with it. And eventually, the vast of amount of new data is going to have an inevitable effect on the three important V’s of big data — variety, velocity and volume. That means less-structured data will be captured faster and in vast amounts. But is all of this data going to provide valuable business information?

Sifting through all the data IoT devices produce will be the job of your data analysts, who knows which questions they want the data to answer. For instance, a car having various sensors tracking its performance can create a lot of data. But being able to get valuable information that’s helpful for the growth and enhancement of the car manufacturer will be the responsibility of data analyst.

So, what does all this mean?

Data will continue flowing into businesses and more devices will join the internet of things in near future. So, for businesses, the key to growth will be learning how to harness business value and make informed decisions from the data through IoT app development. Overall, the convergence of big data and IoT can provide new opportunities in all industries, and along with that, it has the potential to revolutionize businesses in huge way.

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