Big Data Impacts and Challenges: A Review

Data is everywhere, organizations, governments, clicks, web server, business partner, and even our body. Big Data comes to life with insights to improve the technology fashion and lifestyle with calling for readiness to change. Big Data has become a significant factor that could be a material asset for both business and government organizations. As such, it is important to understand the definition of Big Data, their key characteristics, and the challenges surrounding the concept and characteristics. The implementation of Big Data brings new critical challenges that need to be addressed before starting the Big Data journey. The main challenges that are commonly faced by organizations are the implementation of Big Data alongside the critical challenges that involve the challenges related to technology, organization, process, data management, and skills. The challenges are difficult and the growth in terms of Big Data is increasing exponentially which calls for further investigation. This paper reviewed the existing literature on Big Data to achieve three objectives: first, to highlight the definitions and characteristics of Big Data and to summarize the most common definitions of existing works; second, to identify the impacts and the opportunities for the Big Data; third, to present and identify the main critical challenges related to Big Data and categorize these challenges as (People, Technology, Organization, Process, and Data management) challenges.

I. Introduction

Data has grown in terms of the large scale in various fields. According to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute, refers to Big Data as a data-sets with the size that exceed the ability of traditional; database software tools to collect, store, manage and analyze these data [1] [2]. Most of the researcher defined the Big data as “ a term that describes large volumes of high velocity, complex and variable data that require advanced techniques and technologies to enable the capture, storage, distribution, management, and analysis of the information “ [3]. Over the past few years, most of the primary technology player, including IBM, EMC, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Facebook, SAS, and Amazon etc. have begun their Big Data plans. By highlighting IBM as a case, since 2005, IBM has invested 16 billion USD on 30 properties related to Big Data. Many of Big Data key players like SAS Institute, Gartner, IBM, McKinsey consulting corporations indicated to the Big Data as the next edge for innovation, productivity, competition, and quality [3]–[5].