In recent years, few terms have been as overused and misunderstood as “big data.” From making predictions about massive flu outbreaks with a Google flu trends solution, to tracking shopping trends and directing savings to customers, to making real-time trading decisions that impact companies’ and individuals’ bottom line positions — data has become the key to staying competitive in today’s global economy. To understand the industry meaning of big data, and why big data has gotten so much attention, we need to break down the aspects of the database industry that have led to some of the challenges we face when managing and analyzing data today.
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