With the huge amount of data available in great variety, big data is a hot topic today. Along with this, new data is being generated quickly. As a result, big data is soon growing to be part of the economy. Humans continue to generate more and more content in the form of files and e-mails, presentations, word documents, spread sheets and audio clippings.
Managing Big Data
The organisations hold a lot of data, most of it in the form of documents and files. This data occupies a major portion of the digital storage space that the organisations hold. The data generated in this way is stored for a considerable amount of time. Along with the data, an enormous amount of metadata in the form of who created the data; details of the contents of the file, the type of file and other details relating to the data also gets stored. The metadata associated with human-related content is bigger than the data itself. So, the data along with the associated metadata together form the big data.
Digital Exhaust
There are a few problems associated with big data. Most of the organisations are not yet equipped with the right tools to handle the huge amount of data they generate. This necessitates the requirement of good document management systems. Experts have predicted that data in huge quantities will lead to a situation called “digital exhaust” by the year 2020. The digital exhaust will considerably improve productivity and enhance organisational transparency. Analysis of big data has proven that it is capable of improving social, political as well as economical intelligence by 2020.
The Big Data will eventually bring in several improvisations like news casting, also called the real-time forecasting of events. Document or data management techniques will further cause the development of better algorithms that help to understand the world better.
Data Visualisation
However, the technologies related to data management need to improve a lot more. The technology should evolve so as to include better facilities that are capable of handling unstructured data as well as new ways of data visualisation. This improvisation in data handling brings with it a stronger push to the developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
New Jobs
In addition to this, Big Data calls for new roles and skills. Soon, big data will evolve into a do-it-yourself analytics. And thereafter, it will spread a lot more and will prove to be of greater utility to the society. This will eventually lead to a scenario where every kind of knowledge will be data-intensive.
Analysis Of Big Data
A huge challenge in big data is imposed by the unstructured format in which the information is available, which makes it difficult to use the data for business relevant applications and data-driven decisions. Another difficulty is the lack of analytical tools to process unstructured data. These tools are both limited and less intuitive. For instance, the data related to marketing is not structured too well to give good analytical results.
Analysing the big data generated by humans has an enormous potential. Connecting to the power of metadata is very essential to the human generated content. The organisations can use data sharing techniques like file shares and intranets. This makes it easy for ultimate users to share documents and files with organisations, which have more content generated by humans than they can sustainably protect and manage with small data thinking.
Big data and good document managing systems can solve a number of problems that the huge amount of data can pose.
About the Author: Robert Allen created this article for Document Options. dol.co.uk are a Brighton print and document management company specialising in scanning and reprographics.
