Big data is being generated by everything around us at all times. Data is arriving from multiple sources at an alarming velocity, volume and variety. Here are some underused sources of data.

1. 7 ‘HIDDEN’ SOURCES OF
BIG DATA THAT YOU HAVE
BY PROMPTCLOUD

2. BIG DATA
Big data is being generated by everything around us
at all times. Every digital process and social media
exchange produces it. Big data is arriving from
multiple sources at an alarming velocity, volume and
variety. Here are some underused sources of data.

3. PUBLIC DOMAIN DATA
Data placed in the public domain is freely available to any
business. The problem is, many businesses either don’t
realize it exists, or choose not to use it. Following are
some great sources of public domain data that is free to
use.

4.  DATA.GOV
The US Government pledged in 2014 to make all
government data available freely online. This site is the
first stage and acts as a portal to all sorts of amazing
information on everything from climate to crime.

5. HEALTHDATA.GOV
125 years of US healthcare data including claim-level
Medicare data, epidemiology and population statistics.

6. AMAZON WEB SERVICES PUBLIC DATASETS
Huge resource of public data, including the 1000 Genome
Project, an attempt to build the most comprehensive
database of human genetic information and NASA’s
database of satellite imagery of Earth.

7. FACEBOOK GRAPH
Although much of the information on users’ Facebook
profile is private, a lot isn’t – Facebook provides the Graph
API as a way of querying the huge amount of information
that its users are happy to share with the world (or can’t
hide because they haven’t worked out how the privacy
settings work).

8. GOOGLE TRENDS
Statistics on search volume (as a proportion of total
search) for any given term, since 2004.

9. GOOGLE FINANCE
40 years’ worth of stock market data, updated in real time.

10. NEW YORK TIMES
Searchable, indexed archive of news articles going back to
1851.

11. GAPMINDER
Compilation of data from sources including the World
Health Organization and World Bank covering economic,
medical and social statistics from around the world.

12. ENERGY METERING
The power used by your office building is creating data in
the process. The energy metering data, if extracted
properly can help you gain great insights about the
power usage in and around your workplace.
Many companies are installing more number of meters to
access granular data. With such granular data available
on the energy usage, it’s easy to control the environment
for optimal power usage and save significantly on the
power bill.

13. EMAILS AND MEMOS
About 400,000 terabytes email messages are created
every year. Instead of ignoring this enormous amount of
data, how about connecting it to a file system like
Hadoop?
This opens door for data visualization and analysis on
that email data. For example, a company called Igalia
learned that their employees worked less on Mondays
and Fridays from analyzing the email volume.

14. CUSTOMER QUERIES/REQUESTS
Your customer support team is generating data that is of
high business value. Phone calls, emails and support
tickets are great sources of big data. This data could help
you with identifying:
 Issues with your product
 New features your customers want
 Customer training opportunities
 Good/bad customer service reps

15. SOFTWARE LOG FILES
Your business software suite is creating huge amounts of
data in the form of log files. These log files can help you
track everything about the software usage. For example,
a server log file keeps track of when users log on and off,
the applications they access and more. This data can
help you answer the following questions:
 Which applications are unused?
 Which applications are most popular?
 Which users access which applications the most?
 How are users interacting with the applications?

16. SOCIAL/FORUM DATA
Clients and prospects now share opinions about
companies on social sites and forums. People ask
questions about specific companies or products on social
media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and other niche forum
sites.
Crawling and analysing this data is known as brand
monitoring and helps you understand your company's
perception in the market and gain valuable insights on
the brand and product. This can also help you discover
new opportunities and fix existing problems with the
offerings.

17. SENSOR DATA
With all the smart devices around us, we now have more opportunities
to collect real-time data and insights. Sensor data is already being
used by many organizations to optimise various operations in the
workplace. Here are some examples:
 Sensors that track location help transportation companies in
tracking and analysing their fleet
 Sensors can be used in homes and offices to track energy usage,
activity and much more
 Bluetooth beacons are offering companies incredible opportunities
with big data.
 Manufacturing companies are using sensors on pipelines to
monitor pressure, flow, and other data.

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WITH US AT:
www.promptcloud.com
sales@promptcloud.com