Data is the new oil – Our lives are constantly being intertwined with multiple different kinds of technologies that constantly create data like the apps are on our smartphone, the wearables on our bodies, the websites we visit and everything else that’s online. If harnessed, this data can give firms the power to gain analytical insights on multiple different business aspects which can lead to a significant improvement in how services are being delivered.
Just think of how Facebook furnishes unique content to each individual or the way Google powers its ranking signals to provide the most accurate and relevant results, every top service these days can only work because its crunching data in vast quantities like never before.
This is the field of Big Data and it is being made possible through the scalability and cost-effectiveness powered by Cloud Computing.
Cloud computing provides a decentralized resource pool for any firm to access for its Big Data processing needs. Whether you want to store your data, structure it or gain analytical insights from it, modern-day cloud computing products are there to assist you with top-notch solutions that specifically cater to such needs.
Not just that, top cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are constantly developing tools that aid in the creation and utilization of Big Data. For e.g. Amazon Elastic Inference is a product that accelerates the process of deriving inferences from Big Data.
This makes both of them a pre-requisite for the other to not just exist but get utilized by businesses in the right manner.
Here is a list of some definite advantages that cloud computing can provide to the field of Big Data:
Agile Infrastructure:
Setting aside a pool of resources to build an in-house infrastructure for the storage and processing of Big Data can be a daunting task for firms. It’s prohibitively expensive, especially for small to medium-sized firms to pursue.
Along with this, you also need a team of dedicated personnel to set up the whole premise which requires extensive training. These obstacles can make it nearly impossible for any firm with limited resources to indulge in anything related to Big Data Analytics.
Cloud computing eliminates all such hassles by providing you with a ready infrastructure as per your unique needs. You can start from anywhere and in any capacity you deem right for your requirements. This is literally as simple as “Plug and Play”. You just migrate your Big Data to the cloud servers and start working on them and that’s just about it.
Moreover, modern-day cloud services providers offer dedicated tools to allow you to not just store your Big Data but also pursue analytics and access insights from it.
Flexibility:
Scalability has always been one of the top USPs of cloud services. Now businesses don’t need to build redundant capacities in their server networks to handle sudden, large influxes of data for short term periods.
Cloud services provide them with the opportunity to expand or retract their usage as per requirements, so you are only using and paying for what you need. This levels the playing field by allowing even small scale businesses with very limited budgets to delve into Big Data.
Automation:
There are multiple different types of integration tools offered by cloud services these days that automate most of the processes associated with storing, harboring and crunching Big Data.
The amount of data generated can come in many diverse forms and to make sense of so much unstructured data, you need to use automation tools that have the capacity and processing power to derive insights from it. Many different cloud providers already offer such tools that you can tweak and customize as per your requirements, thereby enabling you to run analytics without requiring constant intervention.
Reduced Costs:
Modern-day cloud computing providers are increasingly bringing in new ways to ensure that costs for Big Data analytics remain as affordable for everyone as possible.
For e.g. Amazon uses a pricing model called “Fargate”, in which the consumer is only charged when the cloud service “performs” a certain action like analyzing a certain set of data stream with no charges for hosting and storing the data itself.
This makes it cloud computing an extremely resourceful platform for firms who are planning to pursue businesses that revolve around Big Data.
Easier System Recovery From Attacks:
The amount of cyber threats continues to grow with each passing year and with it, the risk to your Big Data storage arsenals. Traditional data recovery centers are not just expensive to build but they can also get easily compromised along with other components in the network because they are inter-connected through a shared set of resources.
In the case of a cyber-attack, you will be putting your Big Data at risk if it’s stored in your own server networks. Attackers can demand ransom to release the data or and threaten to make it unusable if you don’t do so. This is a disastrous scenario no firm should be willing to put itself in.
That’s why storing Big Data in the cloud becomes so feasible because it eliminates the direct risk to your data in case of an attack and also allows you to recoup faster by retrieving data when the attack subsides.
Wrapping Things Up:
The field of cloud computing is constantly developing newer strategies to help make Big Data processes more streamlined and flexible for businesses. However, to effectively use the cloud platform for your Big Data needs, you will need to acquire the appropriate kind of training that equips you to deal with all the challenges that come your way during the execution phase of this process.
The success of this partnership depends on just how much you can utilize the cloud platforms to run an optimized Big Data program.
QuickStartcom provides you with multiple different training programs to understand the dynamics of this relationship along with the factors that govern it, equipping you with the right knowledge to gain maximum benefit out of running your Big Data program in the cloud.