I was recently asked to define the oh-so-talked about “Big Data” concept. This is what I think it means:

Big Data is a loose term that attempts to grasp the scope of vast aggregations of information and it’s inherited complexity of generating, storing, curating, disseminating, and analyzing this data to yield meaningful results.

-- Andrés

I think the “Big Data” idea is mostly viewed in terms of size (obvious), but it should also be considered–and the sole importance of the data in and of itself–how “big” the information is in terms of value. The whole purpose of capturing the data is with the hope of gaining insight, learning or discovering something meaningful and/or novel from it. That’s why I think that the last words in my definition are so important, and ones that are intrinsically dismissed, with most definitions covering big data in terms of size.

What’s the “big” picture of “Big Data”..the grandiose size or the substantial knowledge that is extracted from it?