Big data is big business and one of the fastest growing areas of the ICT market. But why should you care about the network when you are planning you big data application deployments? As long as you have the right connectivity and ‘enough’ bandwidth then what more is there to consider? Well, quite a lot as it turns out.

Pick your favourite website and count the number of advertisement opportunities that a single page has... it is probably limited to 3 to 4 per page. Normally, the number of ads is larger than the available space in the siteso clearly, there must be an intelligent mechanism to pick the right adverts to display for each visitor: targeted advertisement.

What value will Service Providers add? 

Someone wrote that they could not work out whether Big Data was a problem or a solution and I guess many people would agree with that. The one thing that is true is that Big Data is a godsend for those who organise events and conferences, as the appetite for yet another Cloud event wanes suddenly there are new things like SDN and Big Data to fill the calendar (note to those organising such events I have allocated my budget for this year already so please don’t call).