Big Data 50 - The Top 50 Companies Driving Big Data Innovation

It’s no  secret  that the  world  of  information  technology  is changing fast. Data is being created in ways not possible a few years ago. It is now  feasible to collect  and  analyze data from a wide range of sources, including mobile devices, machines, social media, documents, and emails.

The opportunities are vast. Cisco has projected that, by 2020, there will be 50 billion connected things, including not just phones  and tablets, but other physical objects that can sense and share information. And, an EMC-sponsored report proposed that during the period from 2013 to 2020, the digital universe will expand 10-fold, from 4.4 trillion gigabytes to 44 trillion gigabytes.

A PDF of the Fall 2015 issue of Big Data Quarterly magazine is available for download now. To become a subscriber to the print magazine, go to www.dbta.com/BigDataQuarterly/Subscribe.aspx. 

Exploiting all this data with analytics will result in tangible advances for business, many believe. But the challenge of managing and converting big data streams into actionable insight is growing, according to the 2015 IOUG  survey on database manageability, sponsored by Oracle and conducted by Unisphere Research. A majority (62%) of respondents say their data volumes are expanding at a rate of more than 10%  annually, with more than two-fifths of respondents pointing to new data formats as the cause for most of the data growth they are experiencing.

Today, Hadoop and a related ecosystem of open source projects, as well as NoSQL  database systems, plus private, public, and hybrid cloud infrastructures, and new engineered systems and appliances are among the technologies being deployed to help manage the expanding data onslaught.

Data analytics is certainly not new, but with the variety and volume of data emanating from traditional sources as well as a host of new ones, it’s no longer business as usual. The reason companies seek new techniques for leveraging data is straight-forward: Having better information allows them to make better decisions, which can lead to decreased cost, lower risk, and new business opportunities. The value presented by taking advantage of these new data sources is evident across industries— from the ability to detect fraud more quickly to achieving more targeted marketing to improving medical outcomes for patients.

As a result, the era of relying on a single relational database management system to support all of an organization’s data requirements is coming to an end.

The   relational  database   management   system   remains the workhorse in the enterprise, but new data management approaches  are increasingly seen as attractive ways to handle the growing data influx, according to a 2015 survey conducted by Unisphere Research in partnership with Dell Software.

While structured data is still the foundation of the information infrastructure in most organizations, Hadoop was also currently being used by 15%  of respondents’ organizations, and another 5% were deploying it, while NoSQL  technology was being used at 10%  of respondents’ companies, with 12%  in the process of deploying it.

To help organizations navigate the rapidly changing big data landscape, Big Data Quarterly presents the “Big Data 50,” a list of companies driving innovation.

The Big Data 50 includes forward-thinking companies which are expanding the ways to derive value from data. We encourage you to learn more about these organizations by visiting their websites. You can also gain more insight into how data is being managed, consumed, and leveraged by accessing Unisphere Research’s library of survey reports at www.unisphereresearch.com.