In the parlance of the industry, big data’s feat was a result of the successful convergence of the “three Vs”:
Volume: A large amount of data
Variety: A wide range of data types and sources
Velocity: The speed of data moving from its sources, into the hands of those who need it
Although other Vs have since been contemplated, such as Veracity and Value, the original three attributes promised big data could go far beyond the boundaries of traditional databases, which require data to be stored in rigid rows and columns.
However, over the past year, reality began to sink in: People came to realize what big data could and could not do. Unfortunately, performing large-scale analytics in real time proved to be more daunting than originally thought. Although Hadoop continues to be the world’s most popular big data processing platform, it was designed for batch processing and is far too slow for real-time use.
Reference: 2013 in review: Big data, bigger expectations?
