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  5. EMC Sees Big Opportunity In Big Data: Page 3 of 3
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EMC Sees Big Opportunity In Big Data: Page 3 of 3

According to an EMC-sponsored IDC report, the amount of data amassed by consumers and businesses is expected to increase by 44 times in this decade. A lot of that information will be what many, including EMC, call big data. Obviously, big data requires storage and other products and services that the company provides, so it should come as no surprise that, in its recent blizzard of announcements, EMC targeted big data as one of its key markets. Let's try to understand big data and what it means,
DAVID HILL
February 14, 2011

New mainstream big data IT applications tend to capture or create data through mechanized electronic and electromechanical devices, such as medical equipment, cameras, RFID readers and sensors, rather than through the use of human touch or voice. In general, this data tends to be much less structured than human-created information, which leads to structured or semi-structured information.

Whatever the level of structure, the ability to make sense of massive amounts of data to generate insights that can serve as the basis for decision-making tends to require new and higher levels of analytical tools. Moreover, the scaling requirements on both performance that  asks "How fast the data can be processed?" and capacity that asks "How much data can be efficiently supported" tend to be different than those supported by traditional information technologies. Altogether these different requirements tend to require new architectures.

EMC, as well as many other companies, see big data applications as a big money market. So it should come as no surprise that EMC has invested in both Isilon and Greenplum in order to help it address the opportunity that big data presents. Although no company that makes numerous acquisitions can have a perfect track record, EMC has time and again demonstrated that it has a "green thumb" for acquisitions. One of the reasons is that it values the people who join as part of the acquisition. It not only listens and encourages them, but also adds its own expertise, financial resources and established distribution channels to positively augment what the acquired companies already had.

And both Isilon and Greenplum were well-respected independent companies whose technological prowess was demonstrated by their large customer bases. Big data customers should expect that EMC will continue to add features and functions to the base technologies that it acquired, and the customers of those companies will have to carefully examine what EMC brings to the table--and that is a lot.

EMC is currently a client of David Hill and the Mesabi Group. 

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