Abstract: This paper explores big data and its impact on society and industry. Data collected from many streams such as social data, machine data, and transactional data are collected at rates that reaching overwhelming numbers. Many question its importance and relevance to society, but when evaluated and analyzed, we can see how it has made advancements in technology and in social development that affects each of us on a daily basis. The more data that is collected, the more accurate information we have to meet the needs of an ever changing society. Technological advancements have changed how this data is collected and stored and this is seen in many industries and companies and their use of big data to determine their own relevance in society and how they economic and social development. SAS (Statistical Analysis System) is one of the leading providers of big data and is the standard for data management. Oracle, IBM, and Teradata are some of the leading providers of terabyte scale data to companies that require data management. The following will provide some insight on how big data is generated, analyzed and used to meet the needs of our ever changing society.

Keywords: big data impacts, data types, datification, big data uses, big data defined.