Two of the most-talked about technologies of the modern era, Internet of Things (IoT) and big data are often confusing to understand—both individually and in relation to each other. A question that people often ask is how IoT has changed big data analytics. To answer this, we need to understand the Internet of Things, big data analytics and how they relate to reach other.
Understanding the Internet of Things (IoT)
The next big revolution in technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to generate revenues exceeding $300 billion from over forty billion connected devices by 2020. The Internet of Things (IoT) connects physical items such as home appliances and vehicles to the internet through software or sensors to enable the exchange of information between them. The data exchanged between these devices is part of big data. With connected devices and IoT, managing and analyzing big data becomes easy. Let’s take a quick look at big data and big data analytics.
Understanding Big Data and Big Data Analytics
Defined by the 4 Vs: veracity, volume, variety and velocity, big data existed long before the Internet of Things (IoT) became a means for performing data analytics. Volume and variety refer to the size and type of data, velocity represents the speed with which data is processed while veracity is the data’s uncertainty. Combined, IoT and big data represent an enormous volume of data which can be either structured or unstructured. Considering the volume of data and revenue IoT will generate in the future, companies will have to upgrade their current tools and processes to enable IoT for big data analytics.
Such analytics offer a robust process that allows businesses the ability to investigate massive and varied datasets to reveal market trends, customer preferences, hidden patterns, and previously unknown correlations. As a result, big data analytics can provide businesses with the information they need to make better and informed decisions. By combining IoT and big data analytics, businesses can drive many benefits including improved new revenue opportunities, operational efficiency, better customer service, a competitive edge over rivals, and more effective marketing.
How IoT and Big Data Relate to Each Other
Data and its analysis will drive future technology. Today, a plethora of devices are connected to the internet, making it easier to transfer data gathered for analysis. The purpose of data analytics in harnessing this data to unveil trends and patterns that have a direct positive impact on customers, which in turn benefits the business. To put simply, by analyzing data, you get the answers and solutions you need.
The Internet of Things (IoT) provides the information that big data analytics requires to produce actionable insights. However, the enormous volume of data generated by IoT devices can only be handled with powerful big data analytic tools. Since IoT gathers data on different scale, the big data analytics tool should be able to accommodate quick processing and ingestion and unerring and fast extrication.
