Robert Youngjohns, SVP & General Manager, HP Autonomy, discussed the company’s Big Data strategy and new offerings with theCUBE hosts Dave Vellante and John Furrier, live from HP Discover in Barcelona.

“The big thing we’ve been working on is we’ve taken a lot of the functionality we have in IDOL and made it a service,” Youngjohns said. With the new IDOL on demand, which will be officially announced in today’s keynote, developers can come to these services and “stream these together to create wonderful functionalities.”

“My big vision is that if we do our job, a year from now, 18 months from now, we’ll have tens of thousands of developers thinking about how to leverage IDOL on demand,” Youngjohns said.

Asked what was the key thing that’s driving the innovation, data, or consumer demand, Youngjohns stated “I think it’s ultimately the data, finding new ways to extract value. As we begin to bring the tools in Autonomy and Vertica, we can shed light into the data.” With the current apps HP offers, you can actually change media coverage of the event based on social media feedback, he explains.

Dave Vellante asked what HP wanted to sell more, IDOL or Vertica licenses, hardware, what would ultimately drive revenue. Youngjohns said it would be a hybrid of the two things, the underlying infrastructure and “we’ve also started building some real world, heavy weight Big Data applications.” One of the directions the apps are being developed is direct marketing campaigns.  With the Big Data tools HP has and all the analysis in almost real time, the apps can offer dynamic segmentation of the market for this type of campaigns, which is a “great example of how you build Big Data value.”

John Furrier asked Youngjohns to comment on the humanization element of Big Data, where there was a real art and science, the art side being about humanization. Youngjohns stated it was too soon for that conversation. “At the end of the day, to really get value out of this, you really have to get developers around it. I am a big believer that is how the best software works,” you build a great platform, you build the tools, and get developers around it.

HP does not have a clear revenue model of IDOL on demand. “When you start selling IDOL as a service, we’re going to have to find some added value. The thing that i want to make sure we do is get early adopter traction. Let’s get traction first,” Youngjohns said.

Another big focus for Youngjohns is the Digital Safe product, which is basically an archive to make sure banks and other institutions meet the requirements of regulators. “I need to get the app side of our business growing and fulfilling the market opportunity that I know is there. Compliance regulation is a gold rush.”

Asked what the strategy for the ecosystem was, Youngjohns said it would start with a developer conference. “For the long term effectiveness, enabling a developer community is the heart and soul of it all,” he said, adding he was planning on having a developer conference organized next  year.

Commenting on the most exciting thing happening in Big Data and the data industry being on fire, Youngjohns said “it’s on fire because for the first time people are seeing tools that allow them to see value in the data they’ve just collected. Suddenly you can get value out of it in a way that traditional tools could never do.”

Watch the full interview here.