Published on 02, Aug 2023

Data Science Expert Vijayasarathi Balasubramanian Shares His Thoughts on the Rise of Big Data and Cloud Computing

As of 2023, recent studies have suggested that there are over 15 billion devices currently connected to the Internet of Things or IoT. Basically, if you have a smart device of any kind—your phone, your tablet, your centerpiece salt shaker—it’s connected to IoT. With so many users and devices currently online, this means that there’s an incredible volume, velocity, and variety of information buzzing around every second, and these three Vs make up what experts call “big data”.

One such expert is Vijayasarathi “Vijay” Balasubramanian, a data scientist who works closely with big data in the e-commerce sector. He has seventeen years of experience working in the field and has gained practical insight as to how data should best be handled. 

“Part of my job is to provide up-to-date, practical data solutions in hybrid and isolated environments, which is useful when you’re dealing with high volumes of data coming in from a multitude of sources,” Vijay says. “E-commerce is flooded with information daily as a third of people in the world, or about 2.64 billion, shop online. This sheer increase of big data has changed the standards of how businesses and industry experts intake, store, and process information.” 

And it’s true. Big players in the tech industry have responded to this sharp increase in demand by creating heavy hitting cloud computing platforms, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Before, businesses, experts, and devices would store any data they used on local servers, and while this is still a common practice, the rise of cloud computing has added a new dimension to data storage, analytics, and usability.

Vijay adds, “These platforms have made it easier and more accessible for businesses or for data scientists like myself to analyze, process, and utilize large amounts of data. Cloud computing lifts the strain on physical infrastructure and helps reduce the cost of local data storage, and now that more people are embracing hybrid work environments, everyone’s able to sustain their servers and offer affordable services to their clients.”

Cloud services have grown with such rapidity that it has given birth to a multitude of categories with three of the most common being Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). However, due to the use of data sciences by dedicated professionals such as Vijay, a new category is steadily gaining popularity, and it’s Data-as-a-Service (DaaS).

“It can be argued that DaaS is just an offshoot of SaaS, but I believe that it’s really coming along as its own separate thing,” comments Vijay. “DaaS is a paradigm that is paired with the cloud and uses data management strategies to relay data services to the end user. As we discussed, this can be a variety of things like storage, analytics, and so on, but it also helps build solutions to scale and allows for organizations to have a tighter, higher functioning level of collaboration just like SaaS. Work-diverse teams (in-house, hybrid, and remote) can all easily share their knowledge to create projects in real time more efficiently by leveraging both DaaS and SaaS methodologies.”

Data science is a broad reaching field with many connecting disciplines, but that makes it incredibly versatile. Vijay is one of many experts keeping an eye on the many developments happening with data science, the cloud, and the IoT. As demands increase and as more users come online, there will constantly be new advancements and innovations at hand. This opens up a wealth of possibilities for current and aspiring professionals. 

Vijay leaves us with this note, “By understanding how the landscape is expanding and changing, businesses, data scientists, and other professionals can take advantage of this cutting edge cloud technology and build a well-organized, cost-efficient, and more secure future for the field and the Internet at large. I’m excited for what comes next, and I’m already anticipating how I’ll meet each new challenge head on.”

ABOUT VIJAYASARATHI BALASUBRAMANIAN

Vijayasarathi "Vijay" Balasubramanian got his start back in 2006 when he first implemented AI-technology for British Telecom, the largest Telecom provider in the UK. This sparked his interest in data science and inspired him to enroll at the University of Notre Dame where he graduated with a Masters in Data Science. From there, he went on to create enterprise scale data products and to apply advanced machine learning to solve real world problems. He currently works as a Senior Data and Applied Scientist at Microsoft.

Outside of what he does professionally, he contributes to the open source community like Apache Airflow, Apache Beam, and TensorFlow and mentors AI startup founders and data science professionals across various platforms. He’s also associated with technical organizations including IEEE, IET, and BCS.

To learn more about Vijay or his future pursuits, you can find him on his website.