Algorithms: The Silent Game Changer in Big Data

Hype is synonymous with Big Data. But data is nothing new.

What’s new is that manufacturers are finally learning how to draw critical insights from that data for competitive advantage. The key to that, of course, is having the knowledge and understanding to spend wisely on knowledge discovery and getting the data to talk to us.

According to the results of a recent Gartner study, enterprise data is on pace to grow 650% over the next few years, with 80% of that data in unstructured form. This is more than any data scientist -- or person -- can manage.

People’s ability to process data hasn’t changed much over the years, but the technology we employ to help us process it changes constantly. Therein lays the promise of Big Data. Specifically, Big Data analytics that rely on algorithms are our only hope of keeping up with the data explosion.

Algorithms and Big Data

Every time we have faced technology challenges that are computationally intensive, algorithms have come to our rescue, helped us to overcome the barriers and we have pushed the frontier of innovation. A few good examples are:

• Operating systems are algorithms that enable computers to interact with humans. Without operating systems there would no PCs, laptops or smart phones.
• An algorithm that defines how content is stored and transmitted enables the Internet, or the World Wide Web. These were world-changing algorithms and today we have more than 200 Billion web sites at our disposal.
• Google’s ranked search is an algorithm that lets us quickly search for highly relevant content on the web site. 

And yes, there are many more. What they all share in common in the ability to break through barriers that limit our ability to reach across get to the next frontier of innovation. Big data poses a ton of such barriers -- and smart algorithms will help us to overcome these barrier.