Big data is, well, big.  And the benefits are endless.  If you are storing, analyzing and using it right, big data can change the way you run your business and even give you important insights that you couldn’t get otherwise.  The good news is that even the smallest of organizations can easily get into big data because of the lowering cost of storage and affordable CPUs.

And mind you, data growth is exploding.  With more channels that you can use to interact with customers, you can have data from anywhere: your Web site, your stores, your Facebook page, your mobile apps, etc.  In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, mobile and online financial transactions, GPS coordinates and social media activities alone generate around 2.5 quintillion bytes daily.

What is Big Data?

Big data is actually data you get from non-traditional sources, which could be voluminous yet not structured in any way.  You need to incorporate these to the data you already have.  For example, you can use your site’s visitor statistics, your customers’ reviews and comments and other information that you are getting now, and add big data to these, such as the purchasing history of that particular customer and what he or she says on social media about you.

In short, your old data sources are no longer enough to give you the much needed insights and facts that you need to make that big decision and to improve your operations.  The question is no longer “Should we use big data?” but “Where do we start?”

Similar to your old data sources, you must be able to capture, organize, store and analyze big data.  This is much more difficult than it sounds because big data comes from new sources and involves large volumes of unstructured data.  Businesses are simply not used to using big data.

The good news is that Oracle can help you rein in your big data so that you could gather, store, organize and analyze it.  Here’s how it can do so:

1. Oracle Big Data Appliance brings together hardware and software optimized for your big data systems.

You get hardware with a complete software stack including Apache Hadoop, Oracle Linux, Cloudera Manager, and others, to enable you to get started on big data easily and cost-effectively. Know more about Oracle Big Data Appliance here.

2. Oracle Big Data Connectors allow you to integrate Hadoop or Oracle NoSQL data with your Oracle Database.

Know more about Oracle Big Data Connectors here.

3. Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine allows you to get the fastest performance from your planning and business intelligence applications.

It gives you real-time visual analysis. It also enables you to use new types of analytics applications.

Get the complete picture now with Oracle and Four Cornerstone.  Four Cornerstone can help you integrate big data with your traditional data sources so that you could get a clearer and more complete picture, as well as make use of your traditional data to provide context to your big data.  What’s more, you can save because you will be building upon the IT investment you currently have instead of just replacing everything.

Call Four Cornerstone now and start using big data with what you already have!