Basho, a startup that’s already jumped into the NoSQL database deep end, just released cloud-based storage services built on that NoSQL foundation. Expect the competition to be fierce: RiakCS joins a huge pool of cloud storage offerings from everyone from Amazon to Zettanet. Read More »
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if the top two teams in the Netflix Prize competition united and put their predictive analytics skills to work together, you’ll soon find out. On Tuesday, big data service provider Opera Solutions acquired Austrian predictive analytics specialist Commendo. Read More »
The mythical and much rumored Google’s online storage service, Google Drive, might finally make an appearance in coming weeks according to well placed sources tell us. Google is going to offer 1 Gb of storage space for free, but will charge for more storage. Read More »
UnboundID raised $12.5 million to build software that allows people and businesses to manage and trade on their identity across professional and social networks in a simple way. In the binary world of computers, writing software to manage fluid human relationships is tough. Read More »
Key to understanding big data is to move beyond simply examining the technology for data storage and analytics engines. Organizations preparing for a data-centric economy should also examine the roles of data quality, data obesity and data markets in the future of modern enterprises.
Programmers like to visit Facebook, but they don’t want to live and work there, according to an informal poll posted to Hacker News. Respondents said they’re more likely to turn to Github, Twitter or Google+ to keep abreast of what’s going on in their field. Read More »
In the latest dispatch from the too-much-information bureau, on-demand ride service Uber has calculated the prevalence of one-night stands among its customer base. It’s another example of what companies can find out if they’re just able to think of the right questions. Read More »
Google is a champ when it comes to its infrastructure, and a blog shows the search giant is running its data centers at a PUE of 1.14. Compared to Facebook, it has room for improvement, but what about when ranked against Apple, Amazon and Microsoft? Read More »
The technological hurdles to embracing big data are well-known at this point, but strong anti-data corporate culture might be an even bigger obstacle. The changes required to listen to the data and, possibly, to transform a company’s business model take a lot of work. Read More »
A new survey of 600 large companies by Tata Consultancy Services shows that potential cost savings of a cloud computing move isn’t the primary motivation for a migration. Most companies simply want to standardize all of their applications and processes across their businesses. Read More »
Parse is taking its “Heroku for app developers” backend-as-a-service out of beta and making it available as a freemium model. With its SDK, developers can quickly get up and running, allowing it to manage databases, user authentication, push notifications, and even file storage. Read More »
Cloud computing, mobile computing and the consumerization of IT combine to create another force that overwhelms IT departments: complexity, including complexity of devices and applications, physical and virtual computing environments, and related challenges for IT staff.
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Morphlab’s latest mCloud uses uses all solid-state disks while also claiming Amazon Web Services-like pricing. The company’s newest offering, which is part of a partnership with Dell, targets service providers that want to add private cloud computing capabilities that interoperate with AWS as needed. Read More »
Why make a team distributed? For some companies it’s about hiring the best talent, while other founders look at it as a lifestyle decision, but at GitHub, letting the team work from anywhere and at any time is all about producing excellent products. Read More »
Configuration management player Opscode nets $19.5 million in new Series C funding led by Ignition Partners and names Ignition’s John Connors, former Microsoft CFO, to the board. With its cash infusion, Opscode hopes to build its engineering staff and enterprise business. Read More »
Discoverful is a three-month-old travel picture-sharing site that allows users to snap images and share their experiences around the world with their friends. Like Trover, the app is pretty and designed to highlight places instead of people, but it’s founder explains there’s more — data. Read More »
Walmart is changing the way it does e-commerce and there’s a big data story behind that shift. Stephen O’Sullivan from Walmart Labs explains why the retail giant is moving from many web sites to one and from a10-node Hadoop cluster to a 250-node cluster. Read More »
OMGPOP can thank the cloud for its acquisition by Zynga on Wednesday. The gaming startup, whose Draw Something iPhone used cloud computing and a NoSQL database to scale from zero (relatively speaking) to more than 35 million downloads in three weeks and never miss a beat. Read More »
Amazon’s Eucalyptus deal, which gives it a better hybrid cloud story and solidifies the dominance of the AWS API, plus the ever-growing AWS feature set, aren’t necessarily all good news to PaaS and other partners that run their services on Amazon infrastructure. Read More »
Open source data warehousing models have a lot of advantages, the ability to scale horizontally and cheaply among them, but traditional warehousing techniques have their strengths as well, said Vipul Sharma, principle software engineer and engineering manager at Eventbrite, at Structure:Data. Read More »
The problem for many companies is that user information is spread across hundreds or even thousands of different fields in various databases, and it’s difficult to compile it in real time. But doing that successfully is becoming increasingly important, says WiBiData at Structure:Data. Read More »
We’re walking around with sensors in our pockets: those of us carrying smartphones, anyway. As said at Structure:Data, there are huge opportunities for companies to improve existing services and create new ones with the huge amount of data provided by mobile computers. Read More »
Scott Metzger, VP of analytics at flash-memory array maker Violin Memory, argued at Structure:Data that putting flash memory at the heart of big-data infrastructure is a must for any business that is worried about how long it takes to get results from data analysis. Read More »
Los Alamos National Laboratory is trying to build to an exascale computer, which could process one billion billion calculations per second. The man in charge of executing that vision, however, sees a big obstacle toward building it. That problem, discussed at Structure:Data, is resilience. Read More »
There are plenty of benefits from making data available to large repositories. But Trend Micro’s Dave Asprey said at Structure:Data one thing holding enterprises back from putting their data in the cloud is the lack of security of what they’re sharing. Read More »
It’s easier to crunch massive amounts of data when you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every scenario. Sultan Meghjji and his colleagues at Appistry are hoping to make this process run more smoothly, Meghjji explained at Structure:Data. Read More »
Is it possible that most people will be likely to have their DNA profile within the next 5 years? Yes it is, according to Andreas Sundquist, CEO and co-founder of DNAnexus, who suggested this to the audience at Structure:Data. Read More »
When running databases, how do you get the speed you want while offering the flexibility and cost savings of the cloud? At Structure:Data, Wordnik co-founder Tony Tam described how his company was able to move its relational database from dedicated hardware to the cloud. Read More »
“Anticipation denotes intelligence.” Zubin Dowlaty, VP and head of innovation and development of analytics-outsourcing firm Mu Sigma, said at Structure:Data that’s what companies need to be striving for and in this era of big data, the barriers to achieving that have fallen away. Read More »
Two star hires and a well-reviewed phone-and-tablet operating system do not necessarily remake a company, but they do ease the perception — prevalent in recent years — that Microsoft is on its last legs. Could the once-dominant software giant be on the comeback trail? Read More »
Companies who are concerned with privacy and bandwidth issues, but who want to take advantage of the processing power of Hadoop, are actively pursuing a “pump to Hadoop and pull from Hadoop structure,” according to Hortonworks’ Ari Zilka, speaking at Structure:Data on Thursday. Read More »
Data collected can be useful to retailers in many ways, but not necessarily in the ways that one might expect, as discussed at Structure:Data. For example, did you know that there’s a correlation between the music you listen to and the things you might buy? Read More »
At Structure:Data, DataXu showed off its technology in the form of a writhing map of colors that reflected consumer sentiment to cell phone promotions. In practice, this means that a phone company’s ad campaign would automatically increase or decrease offers for contracts or free phones or … Read More »
Consumers have long been trading their personal data in return for access to Web sites like Facebook. The tradeoff has worked well for companies and consumers but, as the pool of data grows, so have privacy concerns. At Structure:Data, panelists say the current so-called solutions are … Read More »
Over time, we’re generating massive amounts of new data, and as it gets bigger, it becomes a challenge to gain insights through traditional database queries. At Structure:Data, SQLstream CEO Damian Black proposes how to solve this problem. Read More »
Hadoop may be the current leader of the pack when it comes to handling big data, but LexisNexis says at Structure:Data the system it developed for its own internal data use — and recently open-sourced — is a viable alternative and in some cases is superior. Read More »
Your corporation is watching you, and it might be using Cataphora’s software, which mines employees emails, IMs and other electronic communications to determine how big of a risk a corporation might face from one bad apple. Read More »
Amazon and Eucalyptus announced a partnership that gives corporate customers a chance to bridge their private clouds with Amazon’s cloud that includes services such as S3 and EC2. It is a sign that Jeff Bezos’ company is aggressively moving to keep competition at bay. Read More »
One solution to the big data skills shortage has been consulting firms that specialize in deploying big data systems companies need to make sense of their information. These companies will continue to play a vital role in helping us make sense of the the data deluge.
Machine-generated data, the non-intelligible zeros and ones that are generated by sensors and other devices, is no longer just for geeks. While it looks like gibberish forward-thinking consumers are already pressing that “gibberish” data into service, according to speakers at Structure: Data 2012. Read More »
In the same way a microscope helps augment the innate ability of the human eye, Quid is trying to create tools to augment how we as humans process unstructured data and visualize it, said Sean Gourley, co-founder and CTO of Quid at Structure:Data 2012. Read More »
It’s tough to overcome some of the biases that have become second nature in most businesses. But if you’re John Lucker, who’s a Principal at Deloitte, overcoming the “human factor” can be critical to the success of driving organizational change. Overcoming that is necessary, however. Read More »
The amount of data processed by companies big and small increases every day – and data centers have a hard time keeping up. Not only is scaling the physical infrastructure costly, it also consumes vast amounts of energy. A solution was discussed at Structure:Data. Read More »
Who will become the standard platform for cloud computing? The stakes are massive, and not simply because of the burgeoning spending on compute as a utility. At stake is control over the applications that run on cloud platforms. Michael Driscoll of Metamarkets sizes up the competition. Read More »
Next-generation online banking service ZestCash uses data to help qualify people for short term loans. The company explains at Structure:Data it has been giving $300 to $800 loans to users based on thousands of variables, which are boiled down to 10 models. Read More »
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