Big Data
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Big Data
Analogous to the development of the Internet and its mass distribution, the amount
of data and information produced daily, grew exponentially. According to IBM
(2012), 90%
of all data available today has been produced just in the last two years.
Whether this statement is precisely accurate or not, it still reflects an ongoing trend:
Big Data. This big amount of information is not easily assessable anymore, as it is
derived from a large scale of different sources including: mobile devices (e.g.
location data), data from scanners in a supermarket, 24 hours of daily produced
video material from cameras around the globe, or automatically generated
measurement data extracted in the medical industry or during ecological research,
as well as communication data published on different Social Media platforms every
second – just to name a few of them (Leitl, 2012, p. 12) & (Mayer-Schonberger &
Cukier, 2013, pp. 19-20).
Michael Leitl (2012), editor at the Harvard Business Manager, further notes that “we
are overwhelmed with amounts of data, which cannot be processed with established
methods or tools.” Hence it is necessary to establish not only new methods, but also
change our perspective of view in a fuzzy picture of Big Data.
Astrid Schweighofer (2013), Project Manager at Unycom, explains the situation of
Big Data based on the business activities at Unycom, which is an IT company
providing software solutions for intellectual property (IP) management, as follows:
In the business field of IP it is essential for companies to systematically gather their
IP-related data and to manage them. IP-rights (protective rights) are rights, which
need to be renewed regularly, often by payment of a specific amount to the authority
in charge. This payment is done autonomously by the company (or by a
representative). The company thus is required to have a good overview about all
their protective rights, and it must know about what to do with them. Such an
overview is practically just possible in an efficient manner with the support of
information technology. Particularly big enterprises need to focus on worldwide
protective laws, which differ from country to country in terms of regulations, time
periods, fees and so on. Hence the support of IT is an essential part in this case.
