“Big data”—the gathering, manipulation, analysis, and reporting of data based on one or more data sets that are too large to be managed by traditional means—has had a big problem: Because of the vast quantity of data to be processed, a single computer, or even a high-end virtual or physical server with multiple CPU cores, is not up to the task of processing that much data efficiently. It’s much better to divide the work among several computers or servers operating in parallel.
Many years ago, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, in his seminal I, Robot, proposed the Three Laws of Robotics:
“Big data” has generated quite a bit of excitement recently, largely because of its promised ability to solve large business and scientific problems. Organizations large and small are eager to use smart, analytical algorithms to make sense of their large data and obtain useful information about their customers, their competitors, climate change, financial markets, and a host of other topics.
