Many businesses today must work with large, complex data sets that traditional dataprocessing software cannot manage. This "Big Data" has unique characteristics which are summarized by the "three V$\text{'}$s$"$:

Volume $-$ Data sets are large. Today, this means they are typically greater than a petabyte in size.

$-$ New data is generated, received, and processed rapidly.

$-$ Data sets may contain many data types.