Cloud computing and big data are in the enterprise to stay, but making the most of them presents challenges for IT decision makers. The future belongs to those companies who can work through legacy tools, ongoing security issues and the data scientist shortage. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There are now more than half a dozen commercial Hadoop distributions in the market, and almost every enterprise with big data challenges is tinkering with the Apache Foundation-licensed software. A new report examines the key disruptive trends shaping the Hadoop platform market. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
IBM’s big data platform will support the Cloudera Hadoop distribution, a surprising decision given the reservations the two companies had expressed about each other before. That gives IBM and rival Oracle at least one thing in common: Oracle’s Big Data Appliance runs Cloudera too. Read more »
It’s beginning to look like there will be no free-standing analytics companies left. IBM is buying Vivisimo for the “discovery and navigation” expertise that companies use to access and analyze (what else?) big data. The news come a week after IBM bought Varicent, another analytics company. Read more »
VMware has acquired Cetas, a startup that provides analytics atop the Hadoop platform. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but Cetas is an 18-month-old company with tens of paying customers that didn’t need to rush into an acquisition. So, why did VMware buy it? Read more »
Big data and the marketing world go together like peanut butter and jelly. Marketers want to present their brands in the most-effective manner possible and always put the right ad in front of the right person. Big data makes that possible at a whole new level. Read more »
This quarter saw Amazon Web Services finally relaxing its public-cloud-only stance and launching services to support hybrid-cloud deployments. Meanwhile, Hadoop players moved to make their platforms more accessible to mainstream BI analysts and database administrators. A new quarterly report analyzes these trends and provides a near-term outlook. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Skybox Imaging, a startup that wants to capture and analyze high-resolution photos and videos of the Earth, has raised $70 million in Series C funding. The money will help Skybox its lineup of software engineers and data scientists that might be its secret sauce. Read more »
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you’re an amateur poet and love big data, high-performance system vendor AMAX has a deal for you. The company is conducting a contest to find the best haiku on big data. But I’m sharing my poems right here. Read more »
TempoDB, a startup out of Chicago, has build a database as a service offering specifically for time-series data thrown off by thermostats, servers, automotive telematics. Does the world (or the Internet of Things) need a specialty time series database hosted in the cloud? Read more »
The headline might sound like buzzword stew, but it couldn’t be any truer. For companies willing to make the leap to cloud services, there will be a lot of companies willing to make big data as easy as paying your bill every month. Read more »
For years, Oracle has wowed Wall Street with fat software margins: Large companies depending on Oracle relational databases pay what it takes to keep them up and running. It’s unclear whether Oracle can carry that dominance over into the Big Data era, however. Read more »
If your organization doesn’t have a strategy for big data now, you will need one in the future. Here we discuss the difference between big data and traditional business intelligence, as well as the considerations executives should take into account as they plan their big data strategies. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In a webscale data center, peak efficiency feels like a blast furnace. I stepped into the hot aisle of Dell Modular Data Center and 1,920 servers blasted 115-degree air right in my face. If eBay’s Dean Nelson has his way, that was just the beginning. Read more »
Social and mobile analytics startup Kontagent has expanded its business to include a data-mining service powered by Hive, the SQL-like interface for querying data stored within Hadoop. It’s a smart move by the company, and one that other cloud-based analytics providers would be wise to replicate. Read more »
The federal government talked a lot about grand scientific visions when it unveiled its big data agenda last week, but the government has consumers on its mind, too. Specifically, it doesn’t want to unduly hinder innovation, and it might even be willing to provide data. Read more »
If you have a lot of unstructured data, don’t have (or want) a Hadoop cluster and can write Python jobs, Mortar Data has got the service for you. The New York-based startup is jumping into the fray with possibly the most lightweight Hadoop service yet. Read more »
Managed hosting provider Sungard is getting into the big data space with a new Hadoop service that gives users on-demand access to the popular data-storage and processing platform. Called Unified Analytics Service, Sungard’s new offering joins the growing ranks of cloud-based Hadoop offerings. Read more »
By pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into big data research and development, the Obama administration thinks it can push the current state of the art well beyond what’s possible today, and into entirely new research areas. It’s a noble goal, but also a necessary one. 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. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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 »
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 »
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. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Big data now touches everything from enterprises to smart-meter startups, while Hadoop is fast becoming the leading tool to analyze that data, and debates around privacy abound. GigaOM Pro analysts offer insights on what to consider when it comes to big data decisions for your business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
EMC’s acquisition of Pivotal Labs proves the company really understands the big data market. Namely, that big data won’t go anywhere without great applications, and EMC isn’t the company to help customers figure out how to build theirs. Read more »
With many utilities facing the task of storing petabytes of smart meter data for as long as seven years in order to satisfy regulatory requirements, the ability to house and leverage the massive load of data accumulating from the smart grid is a significant IT challenge. Read more »
Raghu Ramakrishnan, who was the top scientist for several of Yahoo’s key technology efforts, is now a technical fellow with Microsoft’s server and tools unit. This is the latest sign that Yahoo is struggling to retain key technologists. Read more »
Web companies like Google and Facebook invest incredible resources in making sure they know everything about their infrastructures and how server-level issues are affecting the applications that comprise their lifeblood. The rest of the business world is now catching on. Read more »
In September, I profiled six companies doing big data in the cloud, and here are nine more. One of the themes of Structure:Data is “putting big data to work,” and there’s no easier way to get started doing so than with a cloud service. Read more »
Everyone is eager to name the new big data stack — a LAMP stack equivalent for all your big data needs. But with literally dozens of different open-source projects all taking a shot at solving a piece of the stack, settling on a standard architecture is ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Amazon Web Services is indisputably the largest cloud service provider by far, and by all accounts. So what rivals could be No. 2 and maybe even give AWS a run for its money? Some of these names might surprise you. Read more »
Social media are a great source of information on consumer sentiment, but the next wave of analytics in social media will be influence. It’s easy to ridicule your friends and co-workers who are actually concerned with their Klout scores, but this stuff matters. Read more »
The emergence of the big data phenomenon is fundamentally changing everything from the way companies operate to the way people interact to how the world deals with outbreaks of infectious diseases. Here we highlight 10 case studies illustrating how big data is changing the world. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The massive amount of data that is emerging from connected, digital systems, is fundamentally changing everything, from Internet search to entertainment, to disease management, to energy consumption. Here’s 10 case studies that highlight the power of big data. Read more »
The files J. Edgar Hoover kept are nothing compared to the data collected by the Republican and Democratic campaigns in the coming 2012 elections. Thanks to tools such as Hadoop and Hive, campaigns can now predict how to target their campaigns. What’s next? Read more »
Banks and their customers are under constant threat from cybercriminals trying to get at their money, but at least one bank is using Hadoop to help ensure those attacks aren’t successful. And it has changed the face of its analytics efforts. Read more »
Drawn to Scale, a two-year-old startup focused on making SQL ready for the world of big data by combining it with Hadoop, has raised an initial funding round of $925,000. Its product, Spire, utilizes Hadoop to increase scalability and reduce latency across large data sets. Read more »
Enterprises realize their big data is a strategic asset, and they have budget to spend against it. But without the usual yardsticks and metrics for measuring the success, these projects will fall flat. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Twitter has been on a tear lately when it comes to open sourcing big-data tools. The latest two are Cassie, a client for managing Cassandra clusters, and Scalding, a MapReduce framework for simplifying the creation of Hadoop jobs. Big data won’t be black magic forever. Read more »
