Difference between Big data and Cloud Computing

In this post i am going to share you the differences between Big data and Cloud computing. Do they sound familiar, yes! Isn’t it?

They both are the most trending terms in the ever-lasting IT (information technology) sector today. We might think that they both do the same thing but actually, both of them have their own ways to work to perform.

Where Big Data represent a large volume of data which is virtually impossible to process by just one machine regardless if the data is structured or unstructured. Cloud Computing, on the other hand, is more than just an application that systematically not only stores data and programs using a network of remote servers over the internet but also provides services like SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.

Let's start with Big Data.

 It isn't just the description of the data when it gets "big" (say terabytes/day for example). 

It is more about how to organize this data, how to label different kinds of it (structured, unstructured, semi-structured, internal and external), which technologies one uses to store it and retrieve and many other facets... 

Big Data is a broader concept then just data that happens to be big. 

I see it more as a new paradigm of collecting, storing, handling and extracting meaning from different kinds of data.

As for Cloud Computing, it is the paradigm of computing on the fly as I like to envision it. 

Everything (or almost) is de-materialized and you don't need to worry a lot about the setup before starting. 

You don't either need to care about managing a farm of computers before using powerful tools. 

For example, Dropbox allows you to store and access your documents only using an internet connection. This is a cloud service. 

You can also use Amazon (AWS) or Google (Cloud computing) servers (not for free of course) to perform some computationally expensive tasks (let's say inverting a 10^15 * 10^15 matrix). 

Before the cloud era, these tasks were expensive, technically challenging and possible to only a few.

As a conclusion, Big Data represents content and Cloud Computing is infrastructure. 

Nonetheless, the two concepts are connected. In fact, it is thanks to cloud computing that you can process big data on your laptop. 

In fact, it is nowadays much easier to start a tech company than ever before. 

key differences between Big data and Cloud:

1.Big data simply represents huge sets of data, both structured and unstructured, that can be further processed to extract information. Huge volumes of data in all kinds of formats over the internet every second. Businesses store that data to be analyzed later using tools increase the outcome and performance.

Cloud computing is nothing but a host of remote servers to manage and process such huge volumes of data. In Cloud Computing you do not store data or run services on your local servers rather it’s all done for you somewhere outside. It provides the platform to share computer facilities to run programs. The term cloud here means the network of computers to store data and run applications.

2.Big Data can be structured or unstructured that can be further processed for analysis using Data Analysis

Cloud computing - It’s a technology used to store data and information on a remote server rather than on a physical hard drive.

3.Big Data can be structured or unstructured that can be further processed for analysis using Data Analysis tools.

Cloud computing - Cloud here signifies the internet which in this case, acts as IaaS (infrastructure as a service). There is no need to run programs on your own servers. Simply just use the internet to access programs.

4.Big Data carry hidden patterns and algorithms which are unlocked by using various tools available in the market. These data sets are further analyzed to provide business insights.