Big Data: Are You Ready for Multimedia Information Systems?

If you take a look at Enterprise Information Systems that are currently in use, you will notice that they are very restrictive in nature in the sense that it is quite difficult to handle data types other than text or numbers.  Moreover, text and numbers are handled using pre-defined (text and numbers) fields only in the database.

If you take a look at Enterprise Information Systems that are currently in use, you will notice that they are very restrictive in nature in the sense that it is quite difficult to handle data types other than text or numbers.  Moreover, text and numbers are handled using pre-defined (text and numbers) fields only in the database.

It is extremely difficult to store/retrieve files of other data type like image or sound. This can be attributed to the fact that although we have seen remarkable changes in computing power, storage capacity and network speed/reach, the underlying database technology hasn’t changed much in the past two decades.

Current generation of Enterprise Information Systems use Relational Database Management Systems (or RDBMS for short). RDBMS is a Database Management System in which not only data is stored in tables, but relationships among the data are also stored in tables. RDBMS use Structured Query Language (or SQL) for managing data and SQL places data in well defined structures using meta data.

Given three Vs of Big Data, namely Data Volume, Data Variety and Data Velocity, traditional data storage, retrieval and analysis tools/technology like RDBMS and SQL  are no longer going to work and we are going to leap frog into a new generation of technology that will fundamentally change the way data is stored, retrieved and analyzed.

Big Data revolution has resulted in the development of a whole host of new tools and technology that can meet the challenge posed by three Vs of Big Data. For example, Not Only SQL (or NoSQL for short) doesn’t adhere to RDBMS model and is designed to capture all data without categorizing and parsing upon entry into the system. Using NoSQL and other tools such as HBase, Hive etc., it is possible to store, retrieve, and analyze very large data sets of multiple data types not just text and numbers. As a result, we are about to enter into an era of multimedia enterprise information systems not only capable of handling very large data sets in real time but also capable of handling multiple data types like sound, video etc.

Question is how many large and medium enterprises are ready for Multimedia Information (ERP or CRM) Systems? Not many in my opinion. What do you think?