Wanted big time: data scientists

When you hear the term “big data“, what do you think it means?

At first glance, one would immediately assume it meant the growing amount of data generated and the ever increasing demand on storage to house it.  That’s only half the story.

It’s a fact that data is growing exponentially.  I talked about the prediction that by 2020 we will will amass 35,000 Exabytes of data up from 1200 Exabytes in 2010.  No doubt that is big data and it means we will need tons of storage to save it all.  SSDs will become more prominent in helping to create this mass of data, and bigger and more hard drives will be put into place to house it all.  But so what? The crap we accumulate in our 3 car garages, and rental storage units doesn’t do us any good unless we do something with it, hence the real definition of big data.

Big data is mostly about understanding what the mountains of data tell us. Enter the realm of the data scientist.  In a recent Forbes article, EMC’s Chief Marketing Officer Jeremy Burton says, “We see an emerging role around data scientists” inside large corporations…if we can build influence there, intellectual capital there, we’ll do well.”

EMC is not alone. Others have played the acquisition card over the past year of business intelligence and data warehousing companies. All in a race to offer end to end solutions for “big data”.  A big part of this solution will be the expertise on staff to provide the analytics. These data scientists will be tasked to deliver the big data movement. A movement that promises to become a mainstay for any storage solution provider.

Attention high school grads, and college students…there’s more opportunity in them there hard drives than you might think…

Let the gold rush of the 21st century begin.

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