3,4,5 … just how many Vs are there?

Aggretates - Solid, Liquid, Vapour.
I am confident, that BigData will harden into a solid and not get vapourised. Perhaps someday, it will reach the critical temperature and just get transparent – like so many other disrupting developments.
(Fig. CC BY-SA 3.0 by Matthieumarechal)
It took a while for the three Vs of Big data to take off as one of the most frequently quoted buzzwords of BigData. Doug Laney of Meta Group (now aquired by Gartner) had coined the in his paper on “3-D Data Management: Controlling Data Volume, Velocity and Variety” in 2001. But now, with everybody in the industry philosophing on how to characterize BigData, it is now wonder, that we start seeing many mutations in the viral spreading of Leney’s catchy definition.

Be it veracity, or volatility, or no Vs at all, many aspects of BigData are now transformed metaphorically into terms with V.

Lets just hope, nobody comes along with too much vapour that makes the bubble burst before it became mature enough. But I am confident 😉

TechAmerica publishes “Big Data – A practical guide to transforming the business of government”

Earlier this month, the TechAmerica foundation has published their comprehensive reader “Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide To Transforming The Business of Government”.

Lobbying politicians to follow the Big Data path and support the industry by issuing the necessary changes in education and research infrastructure is a just and also obvious goal of the text. Nevertheless, the publication offers quite some interesting information on Big Data in general and its application in the pubic sector in particular.

It is also a good introduction into the field. Defining not only the notorious “Three Vs” volume, velocity, variety that we are used to characterize Big Data with, but adding a forth V: Veracity – the quality and provenance of received data. Because of the great progress in error and fraud detection, outlier handling, sensitivity analysis, etc. we tend to neglect the fact, that still data-based decisions require traceability and justification – with those huge heaps of data very well more then ever.

To encourace every federal agency “to follow the FCC’s decision to name a Chief Data Officer” is one of the sensible conclusions of the text.