June 2013 - "Big Data" is a technical
expression. It refers to a set of data so large or complex that it
is impossible to process or analyze in a reasonable time using
available resources. The number of Big Data projects is rapidly
growing, keeping pace with the exponential growth of data
worldwide. The growth is also fuelled by the diminishing price of
computer hardware, software and services like cloud computing.
Companies are more and more interested in processing Big Data in
order to mine its economic value. Extracting the underlying
information and/or correlations promises to bring some return, in
the form of increased profits or lower production costs.
While people happily give out vast amount of information via
social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), there are many other
large data sets that are collected without a person being aware
– e.g. GPS localization data, radio-frequency identification
(RFID) tags, logs from web pages or various databases
