Is big data only for big businesses or can SMBs benefit as well?

nrichmond

Are there any examples out there for how small businesses are using big data?

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bralphye
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We may want to define small business. Is it the income the company makes, or the number of employees? The best case use examples of how big data can be used is for tasks where a great deal of data needs to be analyzed quickly, and there are likely many small companies in tech-savvy areas of the country (or globe) who are using tools for storing and processing big data. However, small companies may have issues that Big Data solutions can resolve, such as searching across backups of multiple user accounts to find a missing file. This of course, would only be a Big Data issue if you had enough data to warrant using Big Data tools. As long as there are open source programs like Hadoop for addressing Big Data, these tools will be available for the SMB market; when bullies like Oracle jump into the market, it could have the effect of raising prices to make Big Data tools unaffordable for SMBs.

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