Data is everywhere; in the webpages you visit, in blog posts you read, on social media platforms you post on, the videos you watch – all of it and more. It would suffice to say that everything you do on the Internet creates data – as does everything you don’t. We generate nearly 2.5 quintillion bytes of information daily, while Google alone is estimated to store over 10 Exabytes of data on a daily basis.

Digital data from all the above sources and more contributes heavily to the massive influx of Big Data and is changing how businesses operate. The quantity and variety of data and the speed at which it is generated and processed each minute makes this phenomenon truly “big”. It is these variables that define Big Data and make it such a dominant factor in manufacturing, sales, marketing, operations, marketing research and business analysis to name a few of its applications. Big Data has led to significant developments in analytics of both text and video, detecting fraud, and predicting consumer trends. However, while solving several problems for both businesses and consumers, Big Data brings with it challenges of its own.