infoTECH Feature

December 31, 2012

2013: A Big Year for Big Data?

With today being the last day of the year and all, it's not hard to look forward at the upcoming year and wonder just what will happen. It's no surprise that the various big data concerns out there also took a look and gave some of their predictions about what was likely to happen in this space.

It's impossible to talk about big data in 2013 without addressing Apache's Hadoop, which brought with it not only a fairly major 2012, but also a likelihood for a much expanded 2013.

A variety of firms featured Hadoop in their 2013 predictions, with MapR CEO John Schroeder saying "hardware will become optimized for use with Hadoop," though Schroeder did notice that the biggest problem in Hadoop right now was "a shortage of talent."

Pervasive Software's (News - Alert) Mike Hoskins, meanwhile, chimed in on a similar note; "demand for enterprise-friendly Hadoop will reach a fever pitch."

One of the more unusual predictions, however, came from Rainstor, whose look at 2013 featured a divergence in the field, with companies looking to technologies besides Hadoop to handle the service.

Given that Rainstor actually offers an SQL-Hadoop hybrid product, this is especially noteworthy.

While it's a bit unnerving to say that Hadoop will get competition in 2013, it really makes some sense in light of other predictions in the field, such as the likely increases in big data spending by companies to the point where it becomes every bit as mainstream as the cloud.

Since big data also has an impact on revenue-generating functions like marketing, it's safe to say it's going to start proving its worth directly in bottom-line impact, and that's going to in turn make the skeptics reconsider their positions as well in 2013.

There's even suggestion that big data will ultimately become more accessible to all sorts of different firms thanks to the rise of the Big-Data-as-as-Service (BDaaS) concept, an idea already being seen in London's IOVOX telephony analytics service.

IOVOX is offering a voice platform that allows tracking, in real time, of telephone traffic – the kind of thing that can be very useful in terms of impact on advertising spent and the like.

It's plain to see that big data can have a lot of impact on a company's future. Anything that allows a business to better understand its customers, its target market, is likely to have at least some positive impact on the way that business operates.

Gathering that information can be difficult; hoping for the best from random surveys only goes so far. But with things like big data in place, it may well get a lot easier to gather and use that data. With the global economy still weak to say the least, 2013 is likely to be a big one for big data.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.




Edited by Braden Becker
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