BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Big Data: Much Hadoop about Nothing?

Following
This article is more than 10 years old.

Next week opens one the largest Big Data events in the World: The O’Reilly Strata + Hadoop World Conference in New York City.  The event is set to draw thousands of Big Data enthusiasts into the city and my team and I will be there to talk about the Small World of Big Data.

The timing for the conference is perfect since, that same week, New York City will be celebrating its “DataWeek.”  DataWeek is a yearly gathering that lets locals get together to talk about the inner workings of the Data world.  If that sounds a little nerdy, think again.

Venture Capitalists and business folks take part in the event in a big way.  We just wrapped up DataWeek in San Francisco and the event included all types of “non-geeks” - from Mike Dauber of Battery Ventures, one of the early investors in Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK), to Ping Li, the notorious leader behind Accel Partners’ $100M Big Data Fund.

Who’s got the biggest Byte on Big Data?

Expected personalities at the NYC event will include Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures - one of the investors in Foursquare and Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA) and I’m also hearing that Mayor Michael Bloomberg will make an appearance.

While on stage, companies like Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX‎) will be talking about the billions of data bytes they can crunch; business folks will be reminded of the billions of dollars invested in this space.  According to Thomson Reuters, venture firms invested a total of $2.47 billion in Big Data in 2011.  A report from Wikibon highlights 40 of such startups and shows that amongst the top 100 venture firms, Andreesen Horowitz, Ignition Partners or In-Q-Tel seem to be the most active.

Much Hadoop about Nothing?

Excitement and strong investment are necessary ingredients to make this space successful.  However, at Strata this year, we will be looking for the conversations that make Big Data a more tangible reality for everyone.

For instance, how do we move the Big Data game from the land of “data scientists” into the hands of regular business people?  For many, Big Data is synonymous with technologies and projects such as Hadoop, Hive, Cassandra, Pig and others.  Most business people don’t (and probably shouldn’t) understand this - what should they do?  Wait for their I.T. people and developers to ramp up?

There is also what I call “the affordability paradox.”  While many of the technologies that make up the Big Data ecosystem are open-source, their deployment seems to be reserved for the companies with the largest budgets.  According to a recent CIO survey, the #1 challenge for Big Data initiatives today is still budget.  How can we broaden the base and let Big Data be more than a game that seems reserved for the ones who can afford large investments in people, services or hardware?

Finally, Big Data is bigger than Hadoop or the data infrastructure.  It’s about insights and the Analytics.  In the words of Jay Parikh, the man behind Facebook’s Big Data initiative: “Big Data really is about having insights and making an impact on your business. If you aren’t taking advantage of the data you’re collecting, then you just have a pile of data, you don’t have big data.”  Facebook might know more than you think...

Will this event extend the Big Data conversation beyond Hadoop?  I hope you can join in!  Find out more information about the event here.

----

Bruno Aziza is a Data Geek, author of “Drive Business Performance” and Vice President of Marketing at SiSense.  Prior to SiSense, Bruno worked at BusinessObjects/SAP, Apple, Microsoft and other data start-ups.  Bruno is French, has studied and worked in Germany, the UK and the US. You can connect with him directly at bruno.aziza@sisense.com