We all wonder what’s the buzz about big data and unstructured data analytics really about? Should you be worried about it? This brief provides you with a crash course on big data: why it matters, the impact on IT, emerging technologies for unstructured data analytics, and how Intel can help. Data is exploding at an astounding rate. While it took from the dawn of civilization to 2003 to create 5 exabytes of information, we now create that same volume in just two days! 1 By 2012, the digital universe of data will grow to 2.72 zettabytes (ZB) and will double every two years to reach 8 ZB by 2015. For perspective: That’s the equivalent of 18 million Libraries of Congress. 2 Billions of connected devices—ranging from PCs and smartphones to sensor devices such as RFID readers and traffic cams—generate this food of complex structured and unstructured data. Big data refers to huge data sets characterized by larger volumes (by orders of magnitude) and greater variety and complexity, generated at a higher velocity than your organization has faced before. These three key characteristics are sometimes described as the three Vs of big data.



The three Vs characterize what big data is all about, but also define the major issues IT needs to address:
Volume
The massive scale and growth of unstructured data outpace traditional storage and   analytical
solutions.

Variety
Big data is collected from new sources that haven’t been mined for insight in the past. Traditional data management processes can’t cope with the heterogeneity and variable nature of big  data, which comes in formats as different as e-mail, social media, video, images, blogs, and sensor  data—as well as “shadow data” such as access journals and Web search histories.

Velocity
Data is generated in real time with demands for usable information to be served up as needed. The confluence of the three Vs drives a fourth: Value. For any enterprise to succeed in driving value from big data, volume, variety, and velocity have to be addressed in parallel. Challenges Emerging technologies such as Hadoop* and MapReduce are designed to address the three Vs of big data.

Value
The ultimate goal of any data analysis is getting Valuable information out of it.

In order to make its services available to organizations of all sizes and for all levels of expertise, AmericSoft has developed a number of service programs, designed to facilitate the ramp-up of project.