In a post today, Dan Kusnetzky of ZDNet interviews MapR Technologies CEO, John Schroeder, about his views on big data, Hadoop, and what his company is doing in this space.

Here’s a little from Kusnetzky’s post on his thoughts on “big data” (which I think are “spot on”):

What is big data?

A while ago, I posted What is “Big Data?”. Here’s a segment of that post.

“Big Data” is a catch phrase that has been bubbling up from the high performance computing niche of the IT market. Increasingly suppliers of processing virtualization and storage virtualization software have begun to flog “Big Data” in their presentations. What, exactly, does this phrase mean?

If one sits through the presentations from ten suppliers of technology, fifteen or so different definitions are likely to come forward. Each definition, of course, tends to support the need for that supplier’s products and services. Imagine that.

In simplest terms, the phrase refers to the tools, processes and procedures allowing an organization to create, manipulate, and manage very large data sets and storage facilities. Does this mean terabytes, petabytes or even larger collections of data? The answer offered by these suppliers is “yes.” They would go on to say, “you need our product to manage and make best use of that mass of data.” Just thinking about the problems created by the maintenance of huge, dynamic sets of data gives me a headache.

You can read more of Kusnetzky’s most recent post here…