How Big is "Big Data"???

How big is "Big Data"?

I think it is ultimately absolutely all information about a thing. 

Another way of looking at what it is defined not in ultimate terms but what it is today gives me the view that it is bigger every day and growing with increasing rapidity toward an ultimate state of all information about every thing like chasing a carrot on the end of a stick but really making progress by some definition of the term while doing it.  That sounds like a conundrum but they are always something to think about.

Some definitions are necessary and Wikipedia provides them in relation to Data:

Data, information and knowledge are closely related terms, but each has its own role in relation to the other. Data are extracted from information, and knowledge is derived from data.

Total Information is the source from which data is extracted and knowledge is derived from that data.

Total information about a person, meaning absolutely all information about them is really information about all their external entity relationships.  A single person is a uniquely identifiable object that has behaviors that it knows in order to implement its various relationships with its environment.

Past performance of all interactions of a single person with its worldly environment is an predictor of future behavior.  Unless, of course they go completely of their rocker.  It happens but statistically rare for any given individual to go totally off their rocker but not so rare when unpredictable actions of an individual occur.  Maybe only unpredictable because not all information about a person's past interactions with its environment were recorded as information about them in their "Big Data" record.

Who has the biggest consolidated aggregate existing "Big Data" record for any single or collectively all people in the USA?

The NSA

However, that is the biggest in one single owned and operated cloud to which has total access.

Aggregate all the privately owned and operated "Information Silo" segmented information  "Big Data" clouds containing personal information about a unique individual and they are obviously far greater than anything that the NSA can imagine and the NSA has a very big imagined objective in the personal information business.  It also had big bucks with which to dream on.

Privately owned or publicly available Silo Big Data is only big in the context of the nature and scope  of the focus of the Silo.  Put Silos together and they become "Bigger Data"  Bigger Data is Better Data.  Hey, that is a good simple slogan for the Big Data, Big Business world and putting fragmented information Silos together is really Big Business and getting bigger all the time.

The License Plate Reading LPR business that was the subject of previous blog entries is a simple example of aggregating privately owned Information Silo information data bases to a single sector global cloud accessible by all customers of the LPR industries.

The NSA has lead the way in aggregating Silo information.  Information recorded in a different ways on different operation systems with different application programs.  It has done this in partnership with the Private Information Management Industry.  The same industry that can do the same thing for Commercial information Silos.  It is either done by:

1.   Translating, reformatting, massaging information from its often unique and difficult to translate native Silo state to a common aggregated state.
or
2.  Providing the dominant industry sector programming to all players in each industry sector to make the aggregation of Silo information to single sector Silo a seamless cloud system.
or, reasonably:
Some combination of 1 and 2 in order to get to number 2 situation.

There is a problem in aggregating sector Silo information owned and operated by different "Big Businesses" competing in that sector.  The big players often probably view their information Silo as proprietary and a substantial investment essential to maintain information asymmetry advantage necessary in a competitive environment. 

The situation of the prior paragraph is overcome when the Big Players in Big Business sector recognize that pooling their individual Silo information in a partnership association has a greater benefits to them than than maintaining their own Silo System.  Those benefits may be cost reduction as well as exclusion or creation of significant bars to entry of potential additional competitors.

Another attractive benefit of competing players pooling Silo Information to a common outsourced Silo for associated members to use is that that consolidated "Big Data" Sector Silo can be monetized in ways that their individual Silos could not.  Some benefit going back as payments to the players, some going to the outsourced "Big Data Sector Silo" entity.

Question:  Who is behind "Big Data Sector Silo Information Aggregation Entities"?  

Answer: Private Equity Investors that see "Silo Information Aggregation" as a very profitable business opportunity.

The business model of investors in Silo Information Aggregation is:  "Let's you and your competitor get together and make more money".  Make more money in areas where it pays more to each of you to cooperate than compete.  Not only that but it protects each of you from potential fractionalization of your business sector.  (Can you say shared fiefdom?)  Shades of the Mafia model?

Sidebar here:  Google the term "Silo Information Aggregation" and there is exactly one hit at the time I write this.  "Silo Aggregation" gets 43 hits.  Cursory qualitative analysis of results gives me the view that nearly all of them relate to internal business enterprise silo integration.

A Multiple Listing Service  is in my view a multiple silo aggregation service model bringing together independent silo data bases and integrating them to monetize an information aggregated information data base in ways that were beyond the scope of fragmented silo data bases.

Big Data is an organic entity that seeks and thrives upon its own growth toward even Bigger Data.  As it grows it consolidates silo information to the benefit of those holding silo information as well as the benefit of the Big Data industry players.  It is a Big Business  cooperation to enhance and protect Big Business profit.