The Cloud And Data-Mining: How Your Business Can Benefit From These New Technologies

Cloud computing has brought more than just ominous terms; it's allowed for businesses to expand their data collection efforts to new levels. They can now track the visible signs a consumer exhibits with their actions. This has led to the development of “Big Data” in the consumer market. The challenge is making sense of what all these signs mean, as there often is an underlying connection between seemingly insignificant or unrelated data. Making these connections occurs through smart algorithms able to deduce relationships between two or more factors. This process is known as data mining. It can benefit businesses in numerous ways, and it may be just what you need to propel your business to a new level.

Practical Examples of the Cloud and Data Mining

The best way to understand how the cloud and data mining work hand-in-hand is through examples of each. This will allow you to understand the numerous benefits that these technologies can bring and help you formulate ways they can improve your current business setup.

Putting the Cloud to Work

Cloud computing has allowed for an unparalleled amount of computation and storage for a nominal fee. You no longer need to rent a piece of hardware with computation and storage that you'll never fully utilize for an incredible fee.

For an example of the cloud in action, consider meteorological data. A massive amount of information needs to be collected, sorted and then computed in ways to ensure more accurate forecasting. Metrics about weather must be meticulously recorded, which means that both storage and processing power are required for predicting the weather.

The cloud is one of the technologies enabling businesses to handle massive amounts of information. Without it, doing so would be unreasonable.

Data Mining in Action

Data mining, while it can be applied to the previous example of weather forecasting, makes more sense when applied to consumer habits. Opt-ins for offers, clicks on advertisements, where the visitor is physically located, and countless other details can be amassed through everyday business.

It's putting these numbers together in a way that helps you understand consumer buying habits that's what business can use.

That's where data mining enters the scene. It takes massive amounts of data, sorts through them, and looks for potential links between seemingly unrelated points of data.

One example of data mining and cloud computing in action is one you can see for yourself. Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, employs both to learn about their customers. They record countless points of data that range from suggested items a customer has clicked to what a customer has ordered in the past. Data mining algorithms then put independent pieces of data, such as the color of the items, day of the week, and so on, together to form a complete picture of the customer's buying habits.

The Cloud and Data Mining: Giving You Insight on Your Customers

The cloud allows you to store nearly limitless amounts of data while data mining gives you a way to make sense of it. Employing both of these technologies in your business and someone who has a master's in database management can give you the insight you need to understand your customers and the foresight to make beneficial decisions. While relatively new, the power in these technologies should be clear as glass. Embracing the cloud and data mining may be enough to give you the advantage over your competition.