Governor Deval Patrick today announced the creation of the Massachusetts Big Data Initiative, a number of steps and initiatives that will expand Massachusetts’ position as a world leader in the rapidly expanding Big Data sector.

Massachusetts houses some of the biggest industries that can leverage so called “big data” – biotech, information technology, healthcare, academic, the hottest areas hyperscale mobile, social and cloud tech, and defense verticals.

Big data is about the intersection between people and machines.   As commented at EMCWorld on SiliconANGLE.tv, Big Data represents a disruptive, wealth creation, society changing historic inflection point that is comparable to the PC revolution of the 70-80s.  Big Data puts productivity in the hands of people – in a new way.  Big Data impacts productivity in every vertical market.  You name the vertical and big data is disrupting it.

The big story here is that Massachusetts business community is recognizing the need to change and be faster in creating value for businesses and startups. Rapid innovation equals rapid iteration. The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and the Massachusetts Big Data Consortium will create a research and development matching grant program devoted to Big Data.

Startup incubator in Boston to support big data has traction and now support by the Governor. The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative is formally getting behind a growing community of entrepreneurs around the big data incubator called of Hack/Reduce, an innovative non-profit community “hackspace” in Boston, where people working with Big Data can share infrastructure resources and knowledge.

Massachusetts is smart to do this. Massachusetts needs to bring their tech mojo back. Exciting to see experienced big data entrepreneurial leaders like Chris Lynch leading this effort.

“Our Massachusetts Big Data Initiative and private investment like Intel’s support of MIT’s CSAIL program will position Massachusetts as a leader in a growing, global industry and allow us to become the premier destination for big data,” said Governor Patrick.

“Big Data Analytics is creating an inflection point for technology innovation, investment, and growth,” said Chris Lynch, a partner at Atlas Venture and a member of the Big Data Consortium’s organizing committee. “Governor Patrick’s leadership on all three of these areas was instrumental in the creation of hack/reduce and will ensure our success in attracting talent to the local communities, job creation, and ultimately our leadership position in today’s big data economy and beyond.”

The Massachusetts Big Data Initiative will expand on the Commonwealth’s already strong Big Data presence. By combining business and academia into the initiative, Massachusetts will maintain a visible presence at the forefront of Big Data. The initiative calls for the creation of the Massachusetts Big Data Consortium, with an organizing committee led by academia and industry, to be facilitated by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke, a collaboration of the Commonwealth with MIT, the University of Massachusetts, Boston University, Northeastern, Harvard, Cisco and EMC, has designated the Computing Center a major public-private resource for the Big Data Initiative.

Currently, Massachusetts has over 100 companies employing more than 12,000 people in Big Data, with another 58,000 data scientists and managers working in fields like health care, financial services and life science, according to the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.

“EMC is pleased to be a founding member of both the Massachusetts Big Data Consortium and MIT’s bigdata@CSAIL initiative. Big Data creates an extraordinary opportunity to transform business and society. Massachusetts, thanks to its world-renowned academic research institutions and strong presence in IT, biotech, and other technology fields, is extremely well positioned to capitalize on this trend,” said Jeff Nick, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, EMC Corporation. “These unique collaborations across government, private industry and academia will help the Commonwealth transform into a global hub for Big Data research and innovation while building upon its existing strength as a world leader in science and technology.”

“The potential for Big Data to impact society is significant only when we connect the many components required to realize it,” said Steve Papa, founder and CEO of Endaca, and a member of the Big Data Consortium’s organizing committee. “I believe Governor Patrick’s effort to catalyze alignment across the many unique Massachusetts assets will accelerate the development of the Big Data industry and the local economy that supports it.”

Also today, Intel and MIT announced a five-year, $12.5 million partnership creating the bigdata@CSAIL endeavor at MIT. The bigdata@CSAIL initiative will bring together leaders from academia, industry and government to develop sophisticated techniques for capturing, processing, analyzing, storing and sharing big data, with the overall goal of making it more useful for society as a whole. Experts in hardware and software development, theoretical computer science, and computer security will come together to develop new architectures capable of sorting and storing massive quantities of information, as well as the algorithms that can process them.

“A key strength in Massachusetts is our academic institutions,” said Mohamad Ali, former senior executive at IBM and Avaya, and current chairman of MassTLC. “Tomorrow’s knowledge economy will be driven by data scientists and data savvy managers. As evidenced by public and private initiatives such as the Intel Science and Technology Center at MIT, no other region is better situated to educate and grow tomorrow’s leaders.”

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