Big Data is clearly involved in every aspect of our lives, whether we know it or not.  Its underlying technology is making its way into more commercial applications, helping to make our lives better and determining how processes can be optimized to improve business services, products and advertising.

Based on Wikibon’s Big Data Vendor Revenue and Market Forecast, 2012 – 2017 report, Forbes created a new infographic that showcases how Big Data is its own universe governed by large companies such as IBM.  Fortunately, because of the wide reach of this Big Data universe, there’s still space for the little guys.

Big Data is currently being used in several industries, making our lives better right now.  Here’s a roundup of some of the top industries in Big Data as outlined in Forbes’ visualization, along with a collection of our recent coverage for further reading on each vertical.

Transportation

As more people use public and private transportation to get from one place to another, compounding traffic causes major problems.  From traffic jams to vehicular and road maintenance, our tax dollars have quite a financial responsibility to road-based infrastructure.  Government agencies now use Big Data to monitor these issues, empowering them to be able to quickly responds to the needs of commuters and drivers.

In Abidjan, the capital city of the Ivory Coast in West Africa, IBM created a transportation model called AllAboard by using Orange’s mobile date.  The transportation model included aspects that could be improved upon to shave off about 10 minutes of travel time.  IBM also partnered up with  Veolia Transdev to develop a mobility solution that helps cities alleviate road congestion, optimize transportation infrastructures, improve travel in metropolitan areas and cut costs. And in Los Angeles, CA, a new traffic control system aims to ease the congestion on the roads.  The Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System will synchronize all 4,500 traffic lights in the city to reduce drive times as well as cut down on pollution.

Health Care

This is possibly one of the best uses for Big Data, to help people gain better health and live a long and happy  life.  Health care is often overlooked when it comes to individual tracking, but with the emergence of mobile health apps, people are better able to pay attention to what their bodies need.  And with data gathered from these web and mobile apps, it’s easier for companies to determine what people can and want to do in order to keep themselves healthy.

With the use of Big Data, researchers were able to determine that in-hospital patients are prone to prolonged stays due to nosocomial or hospital acquired infections.  It was also determined that the government chooses to treat chronic diseases over long term, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, mental disorders even if it can be easily prevented or managed.

Still, Big Data has several benefits, especially when it comes to personal health.  Popular health bands such as FitBit and Nike’s FuelBand help people keep track of their daily workout progress, including their temperature or heart rate.  Soon, there will be a device, Scanadu’s Scout and Scanaflo, that will be able to take a person’s vital signs including ECG readings and stress levels, as well as test a urine sample, to gain insight on symptoms before traveling to the doctor or waiting for a physician to visit their area.  Such tools are especially promising in developing countries where health care and emergency care are lacking.

Financial Services

Anything that has to do with money these days has large potential to generate a good amount of data.  Big Data collected from financial services’ customers can help the institutions determine which areas need improvement, and what other products and services they can offer to make customers happy.

Financial traders are now relying on analytics software and outside services to do the job previously done by junior analysts, researchers and quants ever since the recession hit.  Even financial institutions such as MasterCard have placed bets on Big Data.  MasterCard’s services subsidiary, MasterCard Advisors, even invested an undisclosed amount to Chicago-based analytics provider called Mu Sigma to better understand consumer purchasing behavior.  Big Data can also be utilized in making sound investments.

Customer care

In any business, keeping customers happy is paramount for success.  And in order to keep buyers satisfied, businesses need customer feedback.  This can be done via live chats, e-mails, surveys or any means that could gather customer feedback.  From the gathered data, a business could determine the woes of their clients, identify the problem and solve it.  If people are happy, gathered information could tell them what clients like about their products and services so they’ll know what to market.

An Infographic created by ClickFox discusses the top reason why people hate customer service.  The top reason is being transferred to another department only to be redirected to another department who also cannot help you in your situation.  ClickFox also partnered with Teradata to deliver its CRM analytics offerings which looks into the customers’ interactions with a company instead of their impressions about the company to deliver a more straight-forward look into how it would be possible to optimize customer-facing processes.

Document Management

As businesses move to the cloud, things can start to get cluttered and disorganized.  This is where document management services come in.  It helps you keep your files organized and ready whenever you need them.  But keeping documents in the cloud is just the first step, as there are a number of issues with moving to the cloud, especially when it comes to security.

Alfresco, a company that offers open-platform for large-scale management, beefed up its security and now extends it services to AWS.  It features some built-in security and version control capabilities that other cloud services lack.

And Google recently tripled its storage offerings for Google Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.  Instead of having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, users will now get 15GB of unified storage for free.  This would facilitate more users adapting to Google services compared to those that only offer 2-5GB of free storage. With this move, more data will be put in the cloud and there will be more data Google needs to analyze in order to better understand its consumers.