To a few, 2012 is the year of the cloud.  To everyone else, 2012 is the year of big data.  A hot buzzword, “big data has become viable as cost-effective approaches have emerged to tame the volume, velocity and variability of massive data.”  Being able to tame the big data lion is going to open up previously unimagined doors to users, “Big data analytics can reveal insights hidden previously by data too costly to process, such as peer influence among customers, revealed by analyzing shoppers’ transactions, social and geographical data,” says Edd Dumbill of O’Reilly Radar, a great site with information for emerging technologies.

Big data doesn’t just offer new territory for organizations, for investors it offers a new Wild West, where the opportunity to exploit and control the market lies around every corner.  With new technologies, there are always a few at the head of the pack, and the rewards are immense for those who get in early.

IBM cleanly summarizes what big data is: “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.  This comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few.”

The McKinsey Global Initiative’s Business Technology Office underscores IBM’s sentiments, “The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets – so-called big data – will become a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus.”

Gordon Haff of CNET wrote in April of this year that, “Gaining practical insights from the Internet’s data flood is still in its infancy,” and “Computing is always evolving… however, what makes today particularly interesting is that we seem to be in the midst of convergent trends of a certain momentum and maturity to reinforce each other in significant ways,” adding together the elements of the cloud, mobility and big data.

It would be nearly impossible to find a segment of society that isn’t benefiting from investing in big data.  It is indisputable that big data is turning into an integral part of the market, the volume of data is massive, it is just a matter of turning that data into a useful product that remains to be created.

It’s without question that big data is going to be an important part of the new frontier of data management, so how does one go about investing in it?

Through Companies, like IBM

IBM just released a new line of mainframe computers with the company claim are the “most powerful and technologically advanced ever.”  The zEnterprise EC12 mainframe server “is designed to help clients securely and quickly sift through massive amounts of data, meeting the demands of retail and other clients in the age of ‘Big Data.’”  By utilizing the offerings of IBM, the user is investing in the product, driving development and joining the new technology racing towards the future.

 Through established Investment Groups, like Fidelity Growth Partners India

The private equity arm of Fidelity Worldwide Investment, Fidelity Growth Partners India is investing $20 million in AbsolutData Research and Analytics for advanced and Big Data analytics.   The CEO of AbsolutData, Anil Kaul said that this “investment will enable us to further strengthen our ability to service the increasing demand from our global clients.”

Through private ventures such as The Data Collective

The New York Times have dubbed the four men behind this collective “a council of wise men.  With money.”  One of these men, Zachary Borgue hones in on the West West mentality, “We’re at the start of a multibillion-dollar economic shift based on cheap bandwidth, storage and computer, and an explosion of data, everything has become substantially cheaper for a start-up, and there are lots of areas to disrupt.”  Mr. Borgue is no newcomer to the investing game; he was one of the first investors in Square, and a co-founder of the Founder’s Den.  The Data Collective includes 35 equity partners, with some of the early investors in the first fund reading as a who’s who in technology: Gil Elbaz, creator of Applied Semantics the driving force behind Google AdWords; Todd Papaioannou, former chief cloud architect at Yahoo! and whose new company; and Abdur Chowdhury, former chief scientist at Twitter.  The first fund was a paltry $6 million, and a second, larger fund, $50 million, is currently being raised according to sources that asked to remain anonymous.

The collection and synthesis of big data is still in its infancy, but while its impossible to predict the future, companies such as IBM are staking massive investments on the ability to make big data usable to help create immeasurable profits, that only the future will foretell.