Big Data, as the name implies, relates to very large sets of data collected through free or commercial services on the internet.

This massive amount of data arises from sensors, posts to social networking sites, digital images, videos posted online, transaction records of online purchases, and from mobile phone GPS signals to name a few.

A couple of aspects of big data worth noting are:

it is impossible to remove/withdraw information from big data - information once added will persist indefinitely in the cloud

virtually any information that is stored electronically, including information within personal devices, offline data storage, even information thought to be deleted, has the potential to be included in big data.

Data mining is the process of analysing inter-data relationships – connecting the dots and finding hidden meanings and relationships that can provide startling new insights.

This process of knowledge discovery provides information that can be used by industry to increase revenue and cut costs. This is where the game changes from the cloud being merely a repository of vast information to a technology that yields considerable advantage to those who can properly utilise it.

Recent advances in parallel processing, distributed computing and high-performance computing (HPC) have enabled internet-scale data analytics that give strategic information to their operators.

READ MORE: Explainer: what is big data?