Though Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Dave Rich, CEO of Revolution Analytics (Part 1)

Dave Rich is the president and chief executive officer of Revolution Analytics, a leading company in open source big data advanced analytics. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Dave has more than 28 years of analytics experience at companies such as as Accenture. In this interview Dave is joined by Michele Chambers, chief strategy officer of Revolution Analytics. They both talk about the role of Revolution Analytics in big data and about how the market has evolved and continues to evolve, giving examples of future trends and expectations.

Sramana Mitra: Dave, let’s start by setting the context for Revolution Analytics. Our audience does not know the company. Tell us about what you do, how big you are, and who you work with. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: In this picture that you have presented, where do you see gaps or problems? These could be smaller problems or niche problems. Where would you point entrepreneurs to look for opportunities to start companies? Where are the open spaces and blue-sky opportunities?

Billy Bosworth: I am a little biased based on where I have spent the last eight to ten years of my career, but I think there is a tremendous opportunity for heterogeneous management of everything in those categories. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What does the competitive landscape look like? Of course there is a lot going on in big data. How do you view the map and the competitive landscape? How do you position yourself in that ecosystem with that competitive landscape?

Billy Bosworth: I have been around databases for a long time. This is my 22nd year in the industry, and since I graduated from college I have either been programming databases, administering databases, or writing tools for databases. I have had the real pleasure of seeing this market change, evolve, and grow in many different ways over the years. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So, that means a large number of your customers are basically Internet companies.  Companies that provide Internet services or Internet retail, e-commerce, and so on. Is that correct?

Billy Bosworth: That is certainly not uncommon. Overall, I would not say Internet companies, but that their applications are Internet based. That is the better way to put it.

SM: If you have a major multi-channel retailer with a major e-commerce business, that is still an Internet business.

BB: Exactly. So it is the Internet applications – they could be a traditional  company or a complete e-commerce company, but yes, you are correct. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: The map that is emerging in my mind is that you are doing all the big data processing on your side, whether it is Adobe building a product on top of your platform, or eBay or Netflix building certain capabilities in their transactional systems. That is how you go to the market. Is this an accurate observation?

Bill Bosworth: It is accurate. I think a nice way to talk about that, if you want to put it into a category, is to say that we are infrastructure. Big data has a whole stack of technologies that range from the raw infrastructure layer all the way to the user interaction graphical interfaces. In our world, we produce the infrastructure. We provide the transactional grid underneath that can manage the hyper-velocity at massive scale for your real-time transactional experiences. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I would like you to do two more use cases. Feel free to pick whatever would be a good illustration of your functionality.

Bill Bosworth: What we tend to focus on is the following: When we work with larger companies, many of them have lines of business that are trying to fundamentally change the overall footprint of their business. In other words, they want to either capture new market share or they want to stop the erosion of market share from other startups. To do that, they have to move very quickly into new spaces, and they have to do that against a world that is moving very quickly around them. Often, inside of a larger corporation, our customer will be a particular line of business. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Billy Bosworth, CEO of DataStax (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: That brings me to my next question. What kinds of use cases were your founders seeing? Let’s get into some of those use cases where you as a company bring special value.

Billy Bosworth: I will give you one which is a pure Cassandra use case. This was a very early customer, Netflix. When they needed to change the viewer experience – when viewers were using Netflix streaming services – they turned to Apache Cassandra. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with John Plavan, CEO of EarthRisk (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Is there anything else you would like to discuss?

John Plavan: The main thing I want to address is that we are not a big data company, but we benefit from big data processes. This kind of [technology] has a huge economic and human benefit that comes from being able to quantify relationships and use predictive analytics techniques and tools that didn’t exist a decade ago. If we can be this successful in weather forecasting, to say nothing of the number of advancements that are happening all around the world in other fields, well, we can’t begin to understand the developments that are going to come out of this a decade from now. >>>