For those of you who don’t know me personally, or know me well enough, I seem to have a talent for metaphor. In fact, I think one of the things that I do best is explain complex ideas in ways others can understand, and so that they realize how the idea is relevant to them. While technically not a metaphor, [...]

Two centuries back, the industrial revolution reshaped manufacturing. Today, another transformation is underway. It’s powered by big data, and it touches every aspect of the manufacturing process, from materials sourcing and assembly lines to sales support and maintenance. The potential payoff from harnessing big data insights is enormous, but so are the new challenges that manufacturers are facing around data volume, [...]

With annual revenues in online gaming approaching $100 billion, competition is heating up and it’s getting harder to hook players into a game. Today’s players demand real-time responsiveness, more immersive graphics, and ever-more-exciting interactions with fellow gamers. That poses a dual challenge for game makers, who must pack larger and larger volumes of data — Big Data — into their games, while  [...]

There was a day, a couple of years ago now, where I was let down by a process. I had forgotten the story until yesterday. And, when I shared it with my wife, her first respnonse was “yeah, we were really sad about how that worked out”. Even marking the timing of the story speaks to how we relate the [...]

I have written a  few posts on how in-memory solutions are being adopted in industries such as financial services, travel & logistics, and big pharma to overcome many kinds of Big Data challenges. Here I’d like to share an independent report from a leading analyst, Aberdeen Group, that reinforces the view that in-memory computing infrastructure is essential for successful Big [...]

Big Data has been a hot topic throughout 2012. With 2013 fast approaching,  we sat down with Terracotta CEO Robin Gilthorpe to get his predictions for the top trends that will drive Big Data activity in the coming year. His top five predictions (explained in more detail in this video) are: Big Data has to be fast data. Enterprises will profit from Big [...]

How does a company leverage the same energy seen in the consumer space to drive innovation inside the enterprise? Why couldn’t there be a “corporate instagram-like success”? Why can’t a corporate enterprise service bus excite imagination the way Twitter has? Often its the people way down in the trenches that have great ideas about improvements to the business. Other times, [...]

It’s not the devices your employees are bringing that you should be worried about: It’s the expectations they’re bringing that should keep you up at night. (My sincere apologies to our US readers to whom I’ve disturbed just before a holiday.)