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Big Data and Information Technology

The information technology sector terms the exponential amounts of data generated in today's interconnected world as "Big Data." Big data comes in many forms from meteorological and astronomical calculations and mappings to social media networks and photography sharing networks. Retailers, government agencies, healthcare providers and insurers, financial institutions and other organizations collect large amounts of data on every transaction; every doctor's office visit or purchase, to improve the functions or processes in which they are involved.

A 2010 article from The Economist notes that Big Data is only getting bigger and provides some eye opening examples. Retailer Walmart collects data on over 1-million transactions per hour; enough to fill its data coffers to over 2.5 petabytes (1 petabyte = 1,000 terabytes = 1,000,000 gigabytes = 1-quadrillion [short-scale] bytes) at that time, or over 167 times the amount of data held in the U.S. Library of Congress. From 2000 to 2010, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey collected over 140 terabytes of information; more than had been collected in the whole of astronomy since its ancient beginnings. A new observatory set to come online in Chile in 2016 expects to collect that same amount of data in about five days.

The Effect of Big Data on Information Technology Employment

New data and document control systems, software, and infrastructure to move, process and store this information are being developed as we speak as older systems are becoming obsolete. Indeed, the amount of data we are generating is growing at an exponential rate. Some of the resulting effects include:

  • Employment boom for specialists and IT professionals
  • Shortage of IT workers in US with specific skills to handle large pools of data
  • A developed need for employer-sponsored training programs
  • Call for the government to issue visas to foreign workers in US
  • More data reliant companies in the marketplace as technology evolves
  • New specialty job positions emerging in the healthcare IT sector
  • Special higher education programs being developed to meet future demand in Healthcare Informatics

While the visa issuance debate rages on, IT and Healthcare IT recruitment companies like Talascend are helping customers find the best-fit talent for customers and best-fit IT jobs for candidates in retail, financial, healthcare, software, insurance, manufacturing and other technology markets to handle these effects.

Talascend's IT and Healthcare IT divisions have a broad understanding of what businesses need from an operational standpoint and all the IT staffing challenges Big Data presents to your overall business. Contact our Information Technology specialist team to learn more about they can help. To discover how we can engage you with some of the best IT and Healthcare IT job opportunities involving large data systems, please register with us.