How Big Data Became So Big 105
theodp writes "The NYT's Steve Lohr reports that his has been the crossover year for Big Data — as a concept, term and marketing tool. Big Data has sprung from the confines of technology circles into the mainstream, even becoming grist for Dilbert satire ('Big Data lives in The Cloud. It knows what we do.'). At first, Jim Davis, CMO at analytics software vendor SAS, viewed Big Data as part of another cycle of industry phrasemaking. 'I scoffed at it initially,' Davis recalls, noting that SAS's big corporate customers had been mining huge amounts of data for decades. But as the vague-but-catchy term for applying tools to vast troves of data beyond that captured in standard databases gained world-wide buzz and competitors like IBM pitched solutions for Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave, 'we had to hop on the bandwagon,' Davis said (SAS now has a VP of Big Data). Hey, never underestimate the power of a meme!"
Re:How 'bout Big Salespeople (Score:4, Informative)
If a few well crafted python scripts can solve your data problem your data isn't even remotely close to "big". Not to jump on you to hard here, but there is a shocking number people on slashdot who do this all the time. Big Data by its nature doesn't fit on a single box in the first place. If you can put all of the data in 2u, its not very much data now is it?
Big data, and big data technologies may be a buzz word today, and you are probably right most people don't need them. However, Big Data is a very, very real problem. I design and run systems which crunch 60 plus gigabits of data per second. So no, a few "well crafted python scripts" will accomplish exactly nothing.