Database management and data warehousing are two primary components of this phase. In phase 1, at the very beginning, big data was stored within a business, often internally within the physical location. With the advent of the Internet, advanced networking allowed for such data centers to become accessible online. The US government created the world's first data center to store 175 million sets of fingerprints and 742 million tax returns.
In 1979, IBM introduced the use of the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). It is considered to be one of the primary steps in the foundation of big data, as large data sets and data analytics are facilitated by RDBMS.
Phase 2 : 2000-2010
In phase 2 of big data, web-based unstructured content became the main focus of data analysis for many organizations. The growth of online stores in the early 2000s led to the expansion of web traffic across websites, increasing the amount of data being captured. Companies like Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay started using big data to analyze customer behavior.
The growth of unstructured and semi-structured data increased the demand for storage devices and the software to handle it. Facebook was launched in 2004 and gained more than 5.5 million users by the end of 2005. Soon, many other social media platforms allowed businesses to acquire customers and create sales. Although this was a huge benefit for many businesses, it created a number of challenges for them to find applications and techniques that would allow them to combine the unstructured data from the social media platforms with other business data.
Phase 3 : 2010-Present
The third phase of big data encompasses mobile and sensor-based content. The growth of the smartphone has made it one of the most significant tools for collecting data. Businesses now have the opportunity to analyze the behavior of customers using this data.
Data from smartphones can provide information on the owner’s location, along with their behavior. It is even possible to track users’ health-related data. This type of tracking continuously produces enormous amounts of data. Furthermore, the use of sensor-based devices like TVs and refrigerators also generates large volumes of data.
In this third phase, big data is an increasingly important part of many organizations. If implemented appropriately, big data can improve the way our society and businesses operate.