It all started with the data. There was too much of it. Too much to process in a timely manner. Too much to analyze. Too much to store cost effectively. Too much to protect. And yet the data kept coming. Something had to give.
We generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day (one quintillion is one thousand quadrillion, which is one thousand trillion). A NASA mathematician puts it like this: “1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years, while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years.” This would mean one quadrillion seconds is 32 billion years—and 2.5 quintillion would be 2,500 times that.
After you’ve tried to visualize that—you can’t, it’s not humanly possible—keep in mind that 90% of all the data in the world was created in just the past two years.
Despite these staggering numbers, organizations are beginning to harness the value of what is now called big data.
Almost half of respondents to a recent McKinsey Analytics study, Analytics Comes of Age, say big data has “fundamentally changed” their business practices. According to NewVantage Partners, big data is delivering the most value to enterprises by cutting expenses (49.2%) and creating new avenues for innovation and disruption (44.3%). Almost 7 in 10 companies (69.4%) have begun using big data to create data-driven cultures, with 27.9% reporting positive results, as illustrated in Figure I-1.
Figure I-1. The benefits of deploying ...
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