There are two mainstream technologies in focus or center of IT – Cloud Computing and Big data Analytics. The combination of both lead to beneficial outcomes for the organization. Both technologies’ combination leverages scalable and cost-effective solutions. 

Today we look at major differences between Cloud computing and Big data – their features, advantages and disadvantages etc.

About Cloud Computing

Cloud computing offers services to its users on Pay-as-you-go basis and offers majorly three services. Cloud computing technology is used to store data and information on a remote server instead of a physical hard drive. It uses servers hosted on the internet for storage, management and processing of data instead of storing on a local system. 

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – offers entire infrastructure along with maintenance of associated tasks.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) – cloud offers resources such as object storage, runtime, queueing, databases etc. The responsibility and configuration and implementation lies with end user.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) – is one of the most complex and sophisticated service which provides all required settings and infrastructure 

Features of Cloud Computing

• Hierarchical arrangement of organization structure
• Support resources pooling
• On demand self-services
• Ease of maintenance
• Pay as you go services 
• Economies of scale

About Big Data

Big-data deals with massive structured, semi-structured or unstructured data for storage and processing for analytics purposes.

There are five aspects on which Big data is based:

• Volume – amount of data
• Variety – types of data
• Velocity – flow rate of data
• Value – value of data based on information it contains
• Veracity – data confidentiality and availability

There are tools available in the market which break hidden patterns and algorithms in Big data and these data sets are further analysed to get business insights.

Features of Big Data

• Self-service password reset , registering new devices support
• Data processing in robust manner
• Predictive applications 
• Reporting and analytics 

Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data

Using Iaas, Big data services enable access to unlimited storage and computing power. A very cost-effective solution for big organizations where physical hardware costs are borne by service providers.

Using PaaS Big data services eliminate the need for dealing with complexity of single software and hardware elements management which could be a major concern where data sets can be as large as terabytes.

SaaS platforms give excellent platform for conducting the analysis and that is what Big data is all about gathering and analytics.

Comparison Table: Cloud computing vs Big Data

Download the comparison table: Cloud computing vs Big Data

Conclusion

Cloud Computing and Big Data Analytics both had a lasting impact on the way organizations are functioning and humans are operating. Cloud computing benefits fits all sizes of businesses and individuals. Larger data sets are perceived as a resource and organizations are trying to adopt Hadoop services to exploit this resource. With the current trend we expect more growth in Cloud Computing and Big Data Analytics in the way ahead.

Quick fact!

As per “IDC prediction the global datasphere will reach 175 zettabytes by 2025”