Expert Panel: What's Around the Bend for Big Data?

This week we checked in with a number of thought leaders in big data computing to evaluate current trends and extract predictions for the coming years. We were able to round up a few notable experts who are driving big data innovations at Yahoo!, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook's Hadoop engineering group, and Revolution Analytics-all of which are frontrunners in at least one leg of the race to capture, analyze and maintain data.

Widespread Adoption via Increased Innovation

One of the most echoed statements about current trends in the big data sphere (from storage to analytics and beyond) is that as data grows, the tools needed to negotiate the massive swell of information will evolve to meet demand.

According to Todd Papaioannou, Vice President, Cloud Architecture at Yahoo, Inc., and former VP of architecture and emerging technologies at Teradata, the big trend for big data this year will be widespread adoption of via increased innovation, particularly in the enterprise-a setting that has been reticent thus far.

Enhanced Data as a Service: The New "Big Data Marketplace"

While there are likely going to be rapid developments in terms of frameworks and methodologies to handle massive datasets, with the evolution of more sophisticated tools will come an increased demand for even more data-a demand that Roger Barga, Architect with Microsoft's eXtreme Computing Group feels will be met by a new kind of marketplace.

Barga is a believer in the power of analytics and large data to drive business growth. He admitted that he sees big data computing as one of the most significant innovations in the last ten years-a heady distinction, given the multitude of advances that have emerged.

Context Accumulation and Real-Time Analytics

While some have already addressed some of the more framework-related aspects of evolution in the big data space, on the application and use end, this all seems a little abstract. To put the evolution of big data trends in context, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Scientist behind IBM's Entity Analytics, Jeff Jonas revealed some specific developments, including context accumulation.

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