1.1 Overview

Big data is increasingly becoming part of our everyday life. It is also growing fast. One of the contributing factors to this big data phenomenon in the world we live in today is the advancement of data storage and processing technologies. Data storage facilities as well as other computing resources are becoming faster and cheaper, making it possible to store and process more data until it enters the realm of ‘big data.’

A good example of this evolution is the Internet. In the beginning, there were only a handful of web servers hosting a very small number of Hyper Text Mark-up Language (HTML) pages. Back then, the Internet did not hold big data. Contrastingly, there are now close to one billion websites available, which is at least consistent with the size or volume property of big data.