Big data is generated from various sources producing huge volumes of data every minute, including blog posts, YouTube videos, searches, and social media activity. Big data can provide businesses several benefits like instant insights, improved analytics, vast data management, and better decision making. It allows understanding customers better, reducing costs, and increasing operating margins. Big data has applications in many industries like banking for fraud detection, healthcare for personalized medicine, retail for inventory optimization, and transportation for traffic control. Government uses it for claims processing and insurance uses it for customer insights, pricing, and fraud detection.