7 ‘HIDDEN’ SOURCES OF

BIG DATA THAT YOU HAVEBY PROMPTCLOUD

BIG DATA

Big data is being generated by everything around us

at all times. Every digital process and social media

exchange produces it. Big data is arriving from

multiple sources at an alarming velocity, volume and

variety. Here are some underused sources of data.

PUBLIC DOMAIN DATA

Data placed in the public domain is freely available to any

business. The problem is, many businesses either don’t

realize it exists, or choose not to use it. Following are

some great sources of public domain data that is free to

use.

DATA.GOV

The US Government pledged in 2014 to make all

government data available freely online. This site is the

first stage and acts as a portal to all sorts of amazing

information on everything from climate to crime.

HEALTHDATA.GOV

125 years of US healthcare data including claim-level

Medicare data, epidemiology and population statistics.

AMAZON WEB SERVICES PUBLIC DATASETS

Huge resource of public data, including the 1000 Genome

Project, an attempt to build the most comprehensive

database of human genetic information and NASA’s

database of satellite imagery of Earth.

FACEBOOK GRAPH

Although much of the information on users’ Facebook

profile is private, a lot isn’t – Facebook provides the Graph

API as a way of querying the huge amount of information

that its users are happy to share with the world (or can’t

hide because they haven’t worked out how the privacy

settings work).

GOOGLE TRENDS

Statistics on search volume (as a proportion of total

search) for any given term, since 2004.

GOOGLE FINANCE

40 years’ worth of stock market data, updated in real time.

NEW YORK TIMES

Searchable, indexed archive of news articles going back to

1851.

GAPMINDER

Compilation of data from sources including the World

Health Organization and World Bank covering economic,

medical and social statistics from around the world.

ENERGY METERING

The power used by your office building is creating data in

the process. The energy metering data, if extracted

properly can help you gain great insights about the

power usage in and around your workplace.

Many companies are installing more number of meters to

access granular data. With such granular data available

on the energy usage, it’s easy to control the environment

for optimal power usage and save significantly on the

power bill.

EMAILS AND MEMOS

About 400,000 terabytes email messages are created

every year. Instead of ignoring this enormous amount of

data, how about connecting it to a file system like

Hadoop?

This opens door for data visualization and analysis on

that email data. For example, a company called Igalia

learned that their employees worked less on Mondays

and Fridays from analyzing the email volume.

CUSTOMER QUERIES/REQUESTS

Your customer support team is generating data that is of

high business value. Phone calls, emails and support

tickets are great sources of big data. This data could help

you with identifying:

Issues with your product

New features your customers want

Customer training opportunities

Good/bad customer service reps

SOFTWARE LOG FILES

Your business software suite is creating huge amounts of

data in the form of log files. These log files can help you

track everything about the software usage. For example,

a server log file keeps track of when users log on and off,

the applications they access and more. This data can

help you answer the following questions:

Which applications are unused?

Which applications are most popular?

Which users access which applications the most?

How are users interacting with the applications?

SOCIAL/FORUM DATA

Clients and prospects now share opinions about

companies on social sites and forums. People ask

questions about specific companies or products on social

media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and other niche forum

sites.

Crawling and analysing this data is known as brand

monitoring and helps you understand your company's

perception in the market and gain valuable insights on

the brand and product. This can also help you discover

new opportunities and fix existing problems with the

offerings.

SENSOR DATA

With all the smart devices around us, we now have more opportunities

to collect real-time data and insights. Sensor data is already being

used by many organizations to optimise various operations in the

workplace. Here are some examples:

Sensors that track location help transportation companies in

tracking and analysing their fleet

Sensors can be used in homes and offices to track energy usage,

activity and much more

Bluetooth beacons are offering companies incredible opportunities

with big data.

Manufacturing companies are using sensors on pipelines to

monitor pressure, flow, and other data.

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