GigaOm's Structure: Big Data 2011 offered the opportunity to meet with industry legends such as Andy Bechtolsheim, who was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and Granite Systems (the producer of Gigabit Ethernet). The event was an opportunity for discussion of approaches and methodologies (Does anyone have 4,000 Hadoop clusters?) with discussion of open-source technology such Hive, Hadoop and Cassandra a popular topic among participants. Sharing knowledge, networking and meeting with vendors were all part of the event.
Andy Bechtolsheim, a legend in the computer industry and HPC world, speaks with attendees at event.
Chelsea Piers in New York was the event venue, and its windows afforded river views as the backdrop to the networking and expo area.
The Many Faces of MapReduce panelists discussed technologies that enable many companies and organizations to handle big databases. Panelists shown (left to right) are: Ben Werther, VP of Products, DataStax; Todd Papaiannou, VP Cloud Architecture, Yahoo; Dwight Merriman, CEO and Co-Founder, 10gen; Mike Hoskins, CTO and GM, Integration Products, Pervasive Software; and Amr Awadallah, CTO and VP, Engineering, Cloudera. The session was moderated by Gary Orenstein, VP of Product and Technical Marketing, Fusion-io. Papaioannou said that 100 percent of the Global 500 companies that he talks to are either implementing or plan to implement Hadoop.
GigaOm Senior Writer Stacey Higginbotham (right) moderated a discussion of selling data with Infochimps CTO Flip Kromer (left) and Product Unit Manager for Windows Azure DataMarket Moe Khosravy (right). Both firms are acquiring large databases and improving quality and access, so the data can be used by others for a fee. They represent both ends of the spectrum - Infochimps is a small start-up with 11 FTEs and 5 interns, while Microsoft is the big, established firm. Both are finding customers eager to use their services.