Big data comes from large, heterogeneous sources with decentralized control, and seeks to understand complex relationships within the data. This scenario is like blind men trying to describe a camel based on feeling different parts of it. Big data has three key characteristics:
1) It is huge in volume and comes from diverse sources like social media.
2) The data sources have distributed and decentralized control without central oversight.
3) The data is complex with multistructure associations that require consolidation to extract maximum value.