Today, two of the most popular technologies are Big Data and Cloud Computing that are fundamentally different. On one hand, Big Data is all about dealing with huge data amount. On the other hand, cloud computing is all about handling enterprise infrastructure. Both of these technologies have simplified many business operations together. One of the good examples of the merger of these technologies is Amazon “Elastic Map Reduce” that leverages the power of Big Data Processing and Cloud Computing both.

The combination of both technologies yields beneficial outcomes for organizations. However, both technologies are in their evolution phase but the combination of both the technologies may leverage cost-effective and scalable business solutions.

So, can we assume that cloud computing and big data is the perfect and leveraging combination? Well, this article is all about the effect of big data and cloud computing technologies on business operations.

The Rapport of Big Data and Cloud Computing

Both cloud computing and big data technologies are valuable and businesses are reaping many benefits through these technologies. They aim to increase organizational revenues and reducing investment costs too. Where big data helps in making business decisions, cloud computing helps in managing local software. Now, let’s discuss both the technologies:

Introduction of Cloud Computing

There are cloud computing service models used by the organizations and they are based on a pay-as-you-go model. Usually, the following three services are offered by the cloud service providers frequently:

1). SAAS (Software as a Service)

In this service, the provider offers all software services through the cloud that includes settings and infrastructure management. This is just to ensure that software can be used by any number of users globally.

2). PAAS (Platform as a Service)

Through this service, cloud provider offers various resources like database, runtime space, queuing, object storage etc. Here, the task of implementation and configuration are managed by the consumer itself.

3). IAAS (Infrastructure as a Service)

In this service, the entire infrastructure related tasks along with its maintenance and scaling are managed by cloud service providers.

Introduction of Big Data

Big Data, on the other hand, deals with the semi-structured, unstructured, and massive amount of data. Data processing and analysis are part of big data that can be described with the help of below-listed five Vs:

• Volume: Huge amount of data
• Velocity: Data flow rate
• Value: Data evaluation to derive the meaningful insights
• Variety: Different types of data
• Veracity: Data availability and confidentiality

Organizational Benefits of Big Data and Cloud Computing

In Big Data, the massive amount of data is abstracted from end users through distributed processing and cloud computing helps in handling the challenges of such a scattered system. Various benefits of big data analysis in the cloud are listed below:

A). Managed and Organized Infrastructure

Big data analysis is about to deal with various types of data that comes from multiple sources at varying speed. Traditional infrastructure was not capable to handle the challenges of a distributed system, while cloud computing provides a flexible infrastructure that can be easily scaled as per time and needs, workloads can also be managed easily.

B). Low Cost

Both the valuable technologies, cloud computing, and big data reduce the organizational ownership cost. CAPEX model gets converted to Opex model due to Pay-per-user feature. Apache also has reduced the cost of Big Data that will cut-down the licensing cost of millions of users.

C). Privacy and Security

While dealing with enterprise data, privacy and security are two of the most important factors. To cope up with the security risk, cloud service providers are integrating Private Cloud Solutions that are scalable and elastic. Below-listed security issues are covered in cloud computing for the big data:

1. Data protection from advanced threats
2. Safe data storage by the cloud service provider

Many organizations use big data analytics to prevent and detect malicious hackers and threats to save potential data. Security is a big challenge for big data and cloud computing systems today. In the case of cloud computing, open environment security is a major concern and Big Data solutions like Hadoop uses lots of third-party services that can be used to manage infrastructure. All of such issues have been resolved through Private Cloud computing services.

D). Virtualization

Infrastructure management is a crucial aspect of every organization. Hadoop like virtualization technologies simplifies the big data management and infrastructure management that was not possible earlier. Through big data and cloud computing technologies, IT infrastructure and various dynamic applications have become dynamic, modular, and expandable.

E). Better Analysis

Big data analytics results have been improved due to advancements in cloud computing technology. Many companies prefer to perform big data analytics due to such advanced features and facilities. Through the cloud, data can also be integrated from various sources.

Implementing Big Data and Cloud Computing

Big Data and Cloud Computing have opened endless doors of opportunities and possibilities for organizations. Many drastic changes can be observed that have helped in the decision-making process that may need concrete data. It offers the following services:

• Cost-effective and scalable infrastructure
• Increased Productivity
• Increased ability of real-time data analysis
• Efficient and quick data-processing
• Improved data transfer speed

Many advantages are offered by cloud computing. A number of small companies are using cloud computing services and platform as it is now available at low cost. With equal efficiency and affordable cost, the use or even small-scale organizations can use the big data and cloud computing services and ripe the benefits of both the platforms. They can choose and purchase the platform as per their requirement and perform big data operations.

A huge amount of data can be stored and retrieved from the cloud platform. Much complex processing can be performed and data analysis can be performed quickly and easily. In short, we can say that organizations can use both the technologies to efficiently execute their business operations.

Final Words

Big Data and Cloud Computing are two of the most beneficial technologies of today’s IT world. Organizations can use any or both of the technologies. Cloud computing helps in managing organizational infrastructure needs and big data helps in the decision-making process by processing even a huge amount of data.

Many tools like Hadoop of Big Data can be operated on the cloud and this next-generation technology immensely helps the organizations in a variety of ways. Big Data and Cloud Computing have become important to stay in the competitive world and provide intelligent customer services.