Big data ingratiates into everyday life
To many, the future of big data remains relatively abstract - a great deal of consumers are taking the discussion on cloud computing hosting on a day-by-day basis instead of the long term, but the work of a few forward-thinking minds is changing all of this. In fact, the future of big data is being determined by using the technology itself to take stock of where society and technology are today to better predict where they will be in ten years and beyond.
Joshua Rothman, a writer for the New Yorker, wrote a recent report on the new book "Social Physics" by Alex Pentland, which uses big data to evaluate today's office culture and how changes in technology will alters these daily procedures in the near future. Pentland described research conducted on the social habits of certain industries, and how big data could be maximized to harness their productivity - he paid special attention to the work habits of a Bank of America call center.
"The mystery to be solved, in this environment of extreme solitude, was why different teams of operators handled their calls at different speeds," Rothman relayed. "Pentland found that, of the four twenty-person teams he tracked, the ones with the fastest 'average call handling time,' or A.H.T., were also the most social."
With this in mind, further options for including big data in the social lives of workers became a prominent theme in his book, including speculation on how it will be able to keep professional conversations focused and employees on task. Though the future remains to be seen, Pentland's ideas demonstrate just how ingratiated the technology will become in our professional and personal lives in the years to come.
Organizing big data to maximize its usefulness
For companies that digitize and remotely store large amounts of data using cloud hosting services, an Achilles' heel is often the inability to organize information by type and relevance before crucial documents are lost in the shuffle, further complicating an already vast system. According to a recent report from Bloomberg's Jordan Robertson, such is exactly the case for the U.S. National Security Agency, which continues to use cloud infrastructure and dedicated hosting to prevent another incident like the Edward Snowden catastrophe of 2013.
"Why wouldn't businesses put their big data to work?" Robertson asked in his piece. "Some companies, especially older ones, aren't in the habit of making big decisions quickly and frequently, which encourages a slower collect-and-wait approach to data, said Billy Bosworth, chief executive of DataStax, a database-software company."
This approach to making use of cloud hosting hasn't proved efficient for the NSA, as evidenced by numerous complaints from employees - however, some big data services provide the necessary support to help a company build their system instead of simply granting the space for storage. If your business is looking into the cloud to address your information overload, you're not alone, but the only way to take your big data system into the future is to ensure there is order and user-friendliness to maximize the service's positive attributes.
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