Business Intelligence or Big Data? Nowadays, data is the basis of all business development of a company. Indeed, we generate more and more data every day through various platforms such as social networks, e-commerce sites, etc. All this generates an inexhaustible source of information for companies. If a company does not know how to exploit this factor, it may miss an opportunity to expand its activities and evolve its sector.
Business intelligence and Big Data are two disciplines working in the field of Data. But how do business intelligence and Big Data play out in a business? What differentiates these two terms and usages? Should we choose between the two disciplines? We will explore these two concepts in this article.
What is business intelligence?
The exploitation of data has become essential in a company. This is when business intelligence comes into play.
Business Intelligence, also called Business Intelligence, is the sum of all the administrative, technical, and technological processes used for decision-making purposes. This is so that decision-makers can monitor each of their activities and prepare for potential changes to them.
And Big Data?
Data has been growing exponentially for a few years now. It is from this moment that Big Data was born.
Big Data is a massive set of data that meets the principles of the 3 Vs, namely:
- Velocity, i.e. data is produced, collected, processed, and analyzed at high speed;
- Volume: the size of the data set is very large, reaching several petabytes.
The purpose of this process is to help a company with decision-making.
What are their differences ?
In view of these definitions, the difference between business intelligence and big data seems difficult to determine. You probably have the impression that we are only talking about one subject under a different name. On the contrary, they are really two distinct concepts with several common points, some of which are obvious: processing data and helping the company to make decisions.
Apart from the commonalities that bind the two disciplines, there are also several aspects that differentiate business intelligence and Big Data.
The data source
The source from which business intelligence and big data derive this data is different. Business Intelligence collects the data it processes from the company’s internal resources.
As for Big Data, it draws the information that it will store in a Data Warehouse or a Data Lake from several different sources. Sources can therefore be external as well as internal. The consolidation and processing of data are all the more complicated as a result.
The data type
In business intelligence, data is often stored in a structured way. Since they are of internal origin, the structures used are therefore often identical.
On the other hand, in Big Data, we can extract data from several different sources (social networks, emails, applications, websites, ERP, etc.), and the type and format of the data are also numerous.
Data storage
Another point that differentiates Business Intelligence and Big Data, is that of the data storage system.
Can we combine them?
Despite the differences that exist between business intelligence and Big Data, it is quite possible to use the two concepts together. In reality, Big Data is a logical extension of Business Intelligence. Where business intelligence reaches its limits, among other things, Big Data comes to take over.
Indeed, for some time, Business Intelligence has felt overwhelmed by the strong growth of data generated by the whole world. Internal data is no longer enough to make a company evolve, it is also necessary to take into account the data coming from customers and certain institutions outside their departments. And these data are often very variable and above all abundant.
