Big Data does not necessarily mean big costs; in fact, it is the other way around. Leveraging Big Data reduces your costs significantly in two major areas—storage and processing. In the other areas, the differences are less substantial. Before we develop a comprehensive framework to capture the total cost of Big Data initiatives in your organization, let's start with a simpler discussion around the various spend categories in Big Data:
Procurement of or instrumentation for data collection (can be substantial on a case-by-case basis)
Hardware investments or rental costs for storage and processing of data (usually much less when compared to traditional technology approach)
Software licenses to build and run your environment (a lot of which is available freely)
People-related costs for those engaged in analytics, development, and maintenance of the ecosystem (usually, a small number of very specialized resources)
Physical infrastructure and general...