Big Data is sometimes Fast Data

One of the current hot topics within IT is big data. When we look at big data normally it is shown as the diagram below where we talk about volume, velocity, variety and value.  

When talking about big data the most common areas are volume, variety and the potential value it can have for a business. The thing that is not been discussed that much as it should be is velocity. We do speak about the speed which is needed to process a high volume of data, what is not discussed is the velocity in which data is created and is coming in to your application.

When we talk about velocity we also have to talk about the data lifecycle and the lifetime of data value. If we take for example twitter, twitter is generating a lot of data, when you connect to the twitter firehose you will get a lot of data into your application.

Storing the data is within your application is volume, however when we talk about the capability to catch up with the stream coming in we are talking about velocity.  When talking about velocity we are not talking about big data as such… the new term some people like to introduce is fast data. Meaning, when you hear the term fast data we are talking about the velocity part of the big data way of thinking.