Big Data – The Three V’s Of Big Data

The Three Vs of Big Data

When you think Big Data, think of the 3VS - Volume, Variety, Velocity. Say it again with me - Volume, Variety, & Velocity. In this section, we will go over each of the V’s in brief.

Volume refers to the huge amounts of data that is now available and the ability to store it. Data is being stored from increasing number of sources, while the cost of storage is fast approaching 0$. Organizations are now able to store exabytes of customer & employee data. 1 Exabyte is equivalent to 1 Billion Gigabytes. With the emergence of the internet of things and technology like self-driving cars, the amount of data available is set to grow exponentially as the years pass.

Variety because data is coming in from various sources like mobile devices, social media, wearable devices, the internet of things and GPS devices.The type (format) of data is different as well - mp3, jpeg, text, video are just few of the possible formats.

Furthermore, we can now store all these formats in one storage system. Before, data would be stored in traditional systems storage systems (SQL Server, MySQL) that required structure and consistent format. But since Big Data involves data coming in at extreme pace in different formats, there is a need to be able to store unstructured data on the fly. New technologies like Hadoop allow for storage & processing of this unstructured data to garner business insights.

Velocity: Velocity refers to speed at which data is being generated and processed. Back in 2012, around 72 hours of video was being uploaded to YouTube per minute. The numbers were staggering even back then. As of 2017, there is more than 300 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube per minute. Every minute there are over 200 million emails sent out, 2.5 million Google search queries and 20 millions photos viewed on Flickr. Data is being generated at an unimaginable rate.

In the past, databases would process and update data in “batches”. This would take place once a day, or even once a week. But now, new technology allows for data to be stored & processed instantly. This allows for organizations to make real-time insights and offer customers new deals and offers on the fly.

Resources Referenced

  Big Data: Principles and Best Practices of Scalable Realtime Data Systems