Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Dale Skeen, CTO of Vitria (Part 1)

Dale Skeen is CTO and co-founder of Vitria Technology Inc. He has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and was chief scientist for TIBCO Software prior to founding Vitria. Today, Dale is considered by many of his colleagues in the industry as the pioneer in real-time business process analysis. In this interview he talks about the application of big data as an infrastructure as compared to a service, and he points out the various opportunities for entrepreneurs in the market of big data analysis.

Sramana Mitra: Dale, let’s start with context about you and about Vitria. I have known of Vitria for a very long time, having been in the industry for a while, but I suppose that it has evolved considerably. What could you tell us about the current direction of Vitria and the implications for big data on the company? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Franz Aman, Chief Marketing Officer, Silicon Graphics (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Based on where you sit and what you look at on a regular basis, what are some of the open problems from your point of view?

Franz Aman: In the big data space in particular, everyone has jumped on the analysis and understanding of big data, which is entirely understandable. But I think the next trend we are going to see and the next big wave is going to be all about applications and transactions on big data. I think it is an under-served space and opportunity right now. Before we know it, we are going to see the venture capitalists not so much in just the analysis [of] technology [used in] managing big data, but more about transacting on that data and having the same fidelity in transactions that you have with relational databases. Then what is required to bring big data applications to a mobile environment as well. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Franz Aman, Chief Marketing Officer, Silicon Graphics (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: So, you are avoiding that problem by blowing out the main memory available and then doing the in-memory computing on top of that?

Franz Aman: Correct. Then it is native. It is just available, and your application will just run. We recently did a project with a researcher from the University of Illinois about a Twitter analysis. That was one of these big brain systems where we needed one big, continuous memory space to do some of the analysis in real-time at the rate at which we did it. That is the only way you can do something like that. A lot of times I talk with people about 64 terabytes of space, and they think I have the sizes wrong. They ask if I meant gigabytes and not terabytes, or they think it is disk space and not main memory, but it actually is main memory. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Franz Aman, Chief Marketing Officer, Silicon Graphics (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You talked about in-memory databases and said you were using Oracle’s in-memory database technology. Could you talk a bit about trends in in-memory databases, because it looks like SAP is setting its entire company on HANA? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Franz Aman, Chief Marketing Officer, Silicon Graphics (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: I would like to talk in more detail about some of the customers and problems you discussed. You can pick whichever your favorites are. Let’s do three or four use cases. I would like to dive into the depths of what problems you are solving and how you are solving them. What role does SGI play in terms of what you need in order to solve those problems? What does a big data solution look like in various scenarios? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Franz Aman, Chief Marketing Officer, Silicon Graphics (Part 1)

Franz Aman is the chief marketing officer of SGI (Silicon Graphics), a leader in technical computing. Franz counts more than 20 years of leadership and innovation in global product marketing, brand strategy, and communications. In this interview, he talks about the development of SGI over the past two decades and the opportunities and possibilities that lie in big data in the coming years, especially with regards to real-time data processing.

Sramana Mitra: Franz, let’s start with an introduction to SGI. I have known the company for at least 20 years. We even used SGI machines when I was at university at MIT. We were designing chips using gap tools that were used in SGI or some workstations. Today SGI looks like a very different company. What would you like the world to see when it looks at SGI today? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: David Bernstein, Vice President of eQuest’s Big Data Division (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: I have seen this in other sectors, where a company is essentially offering a software as a service, but it is also offering a business process outsourcing. We can call it SaaS-enabled BPO. There is a company we have covered extensively, called Sabrix, that has a very refined ability to do tax calculations using different countries’ laws. Algorithmically it is very complex. But they don’t only offer it as software and as a service, they also offer the people on top of it to drive the program. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: David Bernstein, Vice President of eQuest’s Big Data Division (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: So, you are basically looking at your data and doing predictive modeling.

David Bernstein: Correct. There is predictive modeling, and then there is the branch fraction index. The benchmarking ability in a real-time comparison is not a level of insight or capability that has ever been within an HR person’s grasp. I have been in this space nearly 20 years. In my time I have had a variety of positions, from being a direct recruiter, a leader of global technology teams, and a director of talent acquisition. >>>