Big Week For Big Data

It's been a week full of big events for big data and analytics, as Hadoop Summit Europe took place in Amsterdam, Gartner Business Intelligence and Analytics Summit in Grapevine, Texas, and GigaOm Structure: Data in New York.

MapR closes $30 million in funding

MapR announced that it has secured $30 million in series C financing to accelerate global expansion and continue our segment-leading product development. Mayfield Fund, which led the funding round, joins our existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA and Redpoint Ventures in this round, bringing total funds raised to $59 million. AllthingsD.com interviewed MapR CEO John Schroeder last week, and talked about company direction, competition and global expansion plans.

Hortonworks Opens European Operations

Commercial Hadoop vendor Hortonworks was a host for the Hadoop summit, and announced the opening of its European operations, with a London-based headquarters. Already supporting more than 25 customers across Europe,global partnerships with companies such as Microsoft, Teradata and Rackspace are enabling Hortonworks to rapidly grow and support its European customer base.

“The European market is aggressively looking for solutions that enable the processing and analysis of big data, and Apache Hadoop presents an enterprise-grade platform for harnessing the power of this information,” said Herb Cunitz, president, Hortonworks. “We are seeing organizations across the globe choose the 100-percent open source Hortonworks Data Platform to prevent vendor lock-in and ensure that their big data strategies can quickly scale for future growth. We look forward to connecting with European Hadoop users to help broaden the reach of the Hadoop ecosystem to more markets across the globe.”

Gartner: Big Data becoming the norm

Gartner research vice president Mark Beyer stated that on the Gartner Hype Cycle, big data is heading into the Trough of Disillusionment.  They predict big data will become the new normal between 2015 and 2017. “The Trough means that market dynamics have changed. Experienced market vendors and implementers know what it takes for a solution to mature and reach enterprise capacity. When the market starts to reach 15-20 percent adoption, then big data will have reached the Plateau, that’s the end of ‘hype’ and the beginning productivity,” said Mr. Beyer. “For something to move into the Trough is a maturation process. Implementers and organizations will begin to choose the winning solution architectures and technologies that support them. The definition of hype is over-promising without a basis of market experience and proof. The Trough is what does that. It will then rise along the Slope of Enlightenment while others drop by the way side.”