Aaron Edell of GrayMeta discussed challenges with big data at a metadata event. He argued the variety of data, not just volume, poses problems. Different file types and metadata structures make data difficult to combine, search, and derive value from. Media companies must address the three V's - velocity, volume, and variety - when managing content. Extracting data without altering it, making it searchable, and considering future needs can help solve these issues.

1. 3/21/2016 GrayMeta: The Variety of Data Could be Your Biggest Challenge : Media & Entertainment Services Alliance
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2. 3/21/2016 GrayMeta: The Variety of Data Could be Your Biggest Challenge : Media & Entertainment Services Alliance
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3. 3/21/2016 GrayMeta: The Variety of Data Could be Your Biggest Challenge : Media & Entertainment Services Alliance
http://mesalliance.org/blog/me-daily/2016/03/21/graymeta-the-variety-of-data-could-be-your-biggest-challenge/ 3/6
GrayMeta: The Variety of Data Could be Your
Biggest Challenge
March 21, 2016 · Posted in M&E Daily, M&E Exclusive
By Chris Tribbey
Aaron Edell, VP of operations and professional services for GrayMeta, isn’t a fan of the term “big data.”
Sure, the term can be used to describe the sheer amount of data coming in (for example, every day, 50 years
worth of video gets uploaded to YouTube). But Edell likes to use the term big data as the challenges or storing
and making use of the data, not the volume alone (even though, obviously in media production, you’re dealing
with some of the biggest files in the world.
“Metadata is a problem and we’re all trying to solve it in different ways, and the amount of data being ingested
is increasing, as is the variety of data,” he said, speaking at the March 16 Metadata Madness event in New
York.
“It’s not a storage problem, it’s a retrieval problem. We know how to store it … you’ve got to store this stuff
somewhere, and it needs to be efficient, it needs to scale. If you can’t find something, that’s a big data
problem.”
Edell relayed the story of a broadcaster on deadline who couldn’t find a storage photo they owned of a celebrity,
and with time running out before going air, they had to buy the photo — again, a photo they owned — from
Shutterstock, which had purchased it from them. “That’s a big data problem, and we need to work on solving
it,” he said.
But the variety of the problem may be the biggest issue people are dealing with today. He used the example of
two spreadsheets, one with two columns of data, the other with three. Now think about those two spreadsheets
with thousands of columns of data instead of just a handful.
“How do you combine them, how do you add them, and how do derive value from that and search that, when
the structure is just slightly different?” he said. “Take that problem and extend it to your video files, your media
content.”
He said media and entertainment companies must address the three “Vs” when approaching their data: velocity,
volume, and variety, and put a plan in place take into account the obstacles of having content be a huge
proportion of the volume
“We’re in a zetabyte era,” he said. “And 90% of world’s data was created in the last two years. That’s kind of
insane, and it’s a trend upwards that we’re already feeling the effects of.”
The anatomy of the solution is being able to extract the data without altering it, make it searchable in a way you
can correlate (like avoiding searching through duplicates) and keep what’s on the horizon in mind when data’s
being entered, he concluded.
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