In today’s world, businesses are generating more data than ever before. This data comes in two primary forms: structured data and unstructured data. Structured data is specific and stored in a predefined format, such as text or numbers. However, unstructured data – compiled from increasingly unconventional sources – is a compilation of varied types of data stored in their native formats. This can include anything from images, video, and audio, to documents or geo-spatial data.
While structured data is relatively easy to manage and analyze, unstructured data is more challenging. It doesn’t fit into traditional database systems, and requires powerful technologies, such as Google Data Cloud, to process it. Yet the insights that unstructured data can yield can be truly game-changing.
By 2025, IDC estimates that 80% of all data will be unstructured. This means that businesses that can turn unstructured data into insights will have a significant competitive advantage. But how can you and your team learn the skills you need to manage this data? How can you bring order to the chaos? The answer is world-class Google Cloud for Data training, provided by QA. Here’s why mastering Google Data Cloud is essential for your business.
Better Data Housekeeping
Before jumping into the exciting opportunities it offers, it's timely to mention that unstructured data is not new - you most likely already have it. However, without a properly-managed Google Data Cloud, this untapped asset could become a serious liability.
Unstructured data (as its name suggests), is notoriously “messy”; it’s continually generated in larger quantities, and is harder to secure than its structured counterpart. With the advent of the “Internet of Things”, almost anything can produce and hold unstructured data. The data that gets generated, from vehicle travel logs to health records, can often be sensitive. Yet that data might not necessarily be stored in silos (discrete collections isolated from each other) like structured data would. Currently, per Komprise’s 2022 State of Unstructured Data Report, 89% of unstructured data “lives” in a hybrid-cloud, multi-cloud, or cloud-only infrastructure. So, without somebody in charge who knows how to run a cloud securely, your unstructured data is both highly visible and easy to lose.
This means that a badly-managed cloud could be compromising both your users’ consent, and your own regulatory compliance. If you store your unstructured data insecurely, or share it with the wrong person, that is enough to constitute a serious breach. However, you can use Google Data Cloud to improve your data housekeeping. In the right hands, it can ensure your data is stored in the right place, at the right time, with only the right people having access.
On the other hand, Google Data Cloud can also protect your unstructured data from exploitation. Many businesses presume that only structured data is of interest to bad actors, so they don’t properly store or secure their cloud-based, unstructured data. However, fragmented unstructured data is extremely easy, and attractive, for hackers to locate and steal. Remember that unstructured data is your greatest unleveraged asset going forward, so it’s guaranteed to be a target. Plus, most hackers already know how to turn unstructured data into insights; if you leave it unsecured, you’re handing them the raw materials they need to usurp you.
Find Buried Insights
Research by Deloitte shows that only 18% of businesses consider themselves properly equipped to take advantage of unstructured data. This is because there are several factors that make processing this data difficult for people, and all of them boil down to our basic human limitations. We’re physically incapable of processing the scale, speed, and diversity of our unstructured datasets. We need tools like Google Data Cloud to do it for us.
If a human was to analyze unstructured data for insights, they’d need to translate it into something they could parse first. But bringing structure to unstructured data is difficult, as qualitative data often cannot simply be “translated” into quantitative data. You can’t “crunch” consumer feedback like you would a set of sales figures, and it would take a huge amount of manual effort to even try. Instead, Google Data Cloud can analyze the data natively and eliminate pre-processing steps. This means the data is stored and processed in its original format, so you don’t need to prepare or convert it beforehand. Once done, it then presents you with actionable insights via a familiar interface.
Google Data Cloud also includes artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and machine learning (ML) tools. These can spot patterns and trends – even in challenging data like images – and draw insights in a swift, scalable way. Although it falls short of superintelligence, Google Data Cloud can achieve a speed and specificity the human brain can only dream of. The insights it gives you provide a much more complete, comprehensive data story than the conventional numbers, columns and rows.
Bring Order to Chaos with QA Google Cloud Training
The global volume of unstructured data is growing at a rate of 55-65% each year. If you want to take advantage of Google Cloud to unlock all those potential insights, you’ll need training. QA’s Google Cloud Platform (GCP) training offering includes a range of data engineering and big data qualifications, covering fundamentals, AI and ML, and insight-gathering. The world of data is changing; this isn’t a challenge you can afford to ignore, or an opportunity you want to neglect.
Learn more and turn these insights into action
Google Data Cloud and QA
Google Data Cloud is a suite of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services that helps businesses collect, store, process, and analyze their data. Meanwhile, QA is the UK’s leading tech talent and training organization, delivering over 70% of the UK’s cloud training. With our world-class programs, we give businesses the skills to harness AI and Cloud technologies, and make more out of their data.