Bill Schmarzo, the CTO of EMC’s enterprise information management service line sat down at theCube with SiliconANGLE’s John Furrier and Wikibon’s Dave Vellante during day 2 of Oracle OpenWorld 2011.  Schmarzo talked about big data, his company and Oracle.

He explained the outline of what he’s been seeing among customers in context to big data: interest along with confusion that requires an educational process for a company to figure out how they can leverage big data to boost business initiatives. Later he also mentioned a skill gap in enterprises that derives from the lack of enough data scientists and a slew of new tools sweeping through this space today.

At that point he said that EMC’s push beyond storage into analytics among other fields was a logical move considering the market opportunity, and the value that can be delivered to customers in addition to just storing their data.

Schmarzo also brought up social media, and highlighted that it provides additional factors according to which companies can find their most valuable (yet not necessarily the most profitable) clients. He also noted that Oracle validates the big data market because the company is a market chaser, according to him.

After talking a bit about what advice he would give to emerging players in the big data space as a veteran in this industry, Schmarzo responded to a question by Dave Vellante highlighting the lack of developments around data quality. Schmarzo said that the reason behind that is the fact social media companies, Google and the other more prominent players focus on ad serving, where a false positive doesn’t result in a loss. A lot of business problems require more speed than accuracy; however, he continued that some such as pricing decisions do require quality over speed.

The interview closed off by a little sports chat, and Schmarzo’s take on how the big data industry will look like in a few years: a few leaders and followers will emerge, and there will be a lot of competitive innovation.


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