Real-time data: true definition
Real-time is recently a very popular term that everyone uses but only few managed to crack its mystery. In a whirl of information processing it’s really easy to apply something without a profound understanding. What does the term real-time data mean and what are its benefits?
What is real-time data: definition
Real-time data is the term we call any information the end users receive directly from the original source as quickly as possible. It is not always delivered to them literally here and now (minimal delays related to the slow devices or data collection infrastructure sometimes happen) but it is always up-to-date. It is important to know that access to such current data means that if something changes in an original source, the end user sees it immediately and not after 7 or 30 days.
So far, real-time data processing has been the fastest technique of data processing — it takes input data (captured real-time) and provides output response that is based on the streams of data.
What prompted the need for real-time data? Of course the needs of everyday life and modern business.
Where real-time data is used? Examples
For obvious reasons, real-time data is used wherever it is possible. We access it every day without even realizing it. Checking the location of a cab that we are currently waiting for in our mobile app is just one of many popular examples. Others are supervising the health condition of patients connected to measurement tools in hospitals and monitoring weather via data from satellites.
Clearly current data also facilitates conducting business. For sure you have heard about real-time data APIs — they are widely used in companies to, among others, help in risk management. For instance, when an employee of the AML department in a bank has to verify a person that tries to get a credit, they are obliged to check whether this person appears on global sanction lists and it’s much more quicker if the organisation equips this worker in sanction lists real-time API — the employee just types the client name and surname and within seconds gets an answer from 16 lists (the algorithm that stands behind API searched for this person in original data sources and gave back the information on their presence or absence). HERE you can read more about sanction lists APIs..
Real-time data is most often used in:
- car navigation;
- health care — monitoring condition of patients;
- banking transactions and ATMs;
- marketing, sales and business analytics;
- client / user activity status;
- monitoring of internal IT systems;
- real-time monitoring and analysis of logs and data in order to detect future threats;
- warehouse inventory management in retail;
- combining data about location, users and destination to make predictive analyzes (matching drivers in terms of proximity, destination, prices and waiting time);
- machine learning and artificial intelligence.
For sure you can imagine in a frictionless way the use of real-time data in a car navigation, but it’s not as easy to visualize how it works in analyzing current events that are constantly happening around us. Even so, there is one example that perfectly illustrates the topic and it’s real-time object detection. Take a look for one of such detector algorithms, YOLO (You only look once, not you only live once).
TOP benefits of real-time data
There are many benefits of real-time data, but let’s focus on the most visible ones.
One of the biggest benefits is an increase in human productivity. Better and faster information flow and decision-making. This benefit applies not only to the work environment, but also to everyday life. We are not aware of this, but without data we receive real-time, our productivity during the day would probably be much lower.
Saving money, next to saving time, is another significant benefit of real-time data. Constant access to current data allows to track the costs of ongoing projects and overall flow of resources. Automatization which is available thanks to real-time information also cuts costs of manual analytical work and.
As an example, let’s take the company’s API monitoring — their speed, number of requests, failure rate. The best API management tools, such as Axway Amplify API Management, allows to monitor all these important functions 100% real-time. That’s how we can discover errors and delays just right away.
The fourth and last benefit is increasing accuracy of performed tasks. The use of outdated data is misleading.
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