Data is an important asset that can generate enormous benefits for businesses. Internet companies are collecting more and more data these days and are on the cutting edge of effectively applying that information to business use.
Shopping online has become a way of life for many Chinese. Doctor Zhao Yihong and his team are trying to understand people's shopping behavior. Zhao works for one of China's largest on-line shopping companies and he believes the answers he is seeking lay inside the data that's collected every day.
"We generate over one petabytes of data every day, and in all we have around 130 petabytes. That is a huge number. Over two hundred thousand different jobs are running on over ten thousand servers to analyze the data," Eric Zhao, VP of technology of JD.com, said.
Its already an explosion of data and Zhao expects that the amount could double next year. Information about what people buy or how products are distributed is just the beginning. Finding out the reason behind the behavior is more challenging. And the core of data business is prediction. In other word, forecast the future.
"What we are trying to achieve is to know the trend before it happens or gets really popular. We could provide our suppliers with a lot of analytical results regarding customer preferences on products. Through deep cooperation, we could really help the supply side," Zhao said.
However, the collection of huge amounts of private data also raises privacy concerns. The technology and management system that's used to protecting private information is also evolving.
"Our employees have no access to any data concerning privacy, for example what a particular customer buys. Even I don't have the access. That private information is encrypted from the beginning," Zhao said.
The Cloud Computing Summit held in Beijing on Wednesday revealed that China's Big Data market was worth 150 billion yuan in 2015 and is expanding more than 35 percent each year. Use of the data is also expanding to almost every aspect of life from manufacturing to education and medical services.
These cutting-edge analysis tools and ideas have provided us with a series of new visions and useful predictions in this emerging age of big data. We have seen connections unnoticed before and are learning more and more about technology and human behavior that we couldn't possibly have understood in years past. But most importantly, the correlation is helping us form a better understanding of the world.
