We have now explored what big data is, as well as its importance. A demand for storing and processing massive-scale datasets has encouraged the development of data storage and database systems over the past few years. With this advancement, storage systems and data models for big data have been improved and enhanced over time, from local storage to clustered, distributed to cloud-based storage. In this section, you will learn about some most popular storage models and data models:

The preceding diagram shows the taxonomy of data stores and data platforms, and the corresponding systems that are currently available in the market. Let's dig into each category in the next section.