Compare the Difference Between Similar Terms

Difference Between Big Data and Internet of Things

The key difference between Big Data and Internet of Things is that the Big Data focuses on data while the Internet of Things focuses on data, devices, and connectivity.

Big Data is a large quantity of complex data. It can be structured, semi-structured or unstructured data. Analyzing Big Data provides several advantages since they allow taking better decisions, reduce cost, and improve operational efficiency and to reduce business risks. On the other hand, Internet of Things is an emerging technology. Smart power plants, grids, smart homes, intelligent transportation, intelligent manufacturing systems and smart cities are some applications of Internet of Things.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Big Data
3. What is Internet of Things
4. Relationship Between Big Data and Internet of Things
5. Side by Side Comparison – Big Data vs Internet of Things in Tabular Form
6. Summary

What is Big Data?

Data is important for all the organisations. Therefore, it is essential to store and analyze data to improve productivity and to take better decisions. In the practical world, the organisations gather a large amount of data. Therefore, as the amount of data grows rapidly, it is difficult to store them using common Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). This large voluminous collection of data is called Big Data.

Big Data has three main properties. They are the volume, velocity, and variety. Firstly, the volume describes the amount of data. It can be in terabytes, petabytes and even exabytes. Secondly, the velocity describes the speed of analyzing data. Business sales, scientific experiments, and real-time applications require high-speed data analyzing. Thirdly, the variety refers to the data type. It can be structured data such as relational data (SQL database stores), semi-structured data such as XML data or unstructured data such as word, PDF, text or media logs. The systems such as Hadoop helps to analyse and process Big Data.

What is Internet of Things?

The short-term of Internet of Things is IoT. IoT connects all the surrounding smart devices to the internet. The basic building blocks of IoT are as follows. Firstly, the nodes or the end devices use sensors and actuators. The sensors gather data and the response of the actuator to the sensed activities.  Some examples are temperature sensors at home, RFID sensors at common stores and cameras in the highway. Secondly, the gateways or local processing nodes collect data from the end devices and perform some amount of processing and filtering to send data to the cloud. It also sends data back to the end devices from the cloud.

Thirdly, the connectivity is another main requirement in IoT. Nowadays, Service Providers provide many solutions to connect the end devices to the gateways and gateways to the cloud. Some examples that provide connectivity are ZigBee, Bluetooth, GSM, and Wi-Fi. Finally, the cloud-based application performs an in-depth data analysis to make relevant decisions, since all the devices connect to the internet to communicate continuously and to make real-time changes as required.

What is the Relationship Between Big Data and Internet of Things?

What is the Difference Between Big Data and Internet of Things?

Big Data is an extremely large collection of complex data. These amounts of data are difficult to analyze and process using common database management systems. On the other hand, Internet of Things is an evolving technology. It connects smart devices to the network to exchange data and to take necessary decisions.

Furthermore, Big Data focus on data while Internet of Things focuses on data, devices, and connectivity. Those are the main differences between Big Data and Internet of Things.

Summary – Big Data vs Internet of Things

This article discusses two popular terms in computing which are Big Data and Internet of Things. The difference between Big Data and Internet of Things is that Big Data focuses on data while Internet of Things focuses on data, devices and connectivity. In brief, Big Data is a large sum of data and Internet of Things is a technology that uses Big Data.

Reference:

1.Internet Of Things (IOT) Easily Explained, Curiousparti, 18 Mar. 2017. Available here  
2.“Big Data and the Internet of Things: Two Sides of the Same Coin?” Sas, Tamara Dull. Available here 
3.“Big Data .” TechTarget, Margaret Rouse. Available here

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