As enterprise-grade cloud and analytics technologies now sit at the intersection of Big Data, discussions turn to the market’s next big iteration.

John Furrier (@furrier), Peter Burris (@plburris) and Jeff Frick (@jefffrick), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, kicked off BigDataSV 2016, which celebrates #BigDataWeek, including news and events from the #StrataHadoop conference, held at the Fairmont San Jose in San Jose, California.

To analyze the state of the market, Burris, the new head of research and member of the executive team at SiliconANGLE Media, was asked to weigh in on where the industry is at when it comes to Big Data.

The state of Big Data

“The first thing to note is there is a lot of investment in Big Data today, and we are getting that investment precisely because of the experiences of the past … we are looking for ways to fix past problems with some of the new technologies, and the investment is significant,” Burris said.

He continued to say that we are now focusing on how to utilize the technology better by solving problems, applying these past lessons. He feels the market will need to get better at discovering and predicting how all these new technologies can be applied to business, find ways to operationalize that expertise.

Use-cases: Looking for playbook

When asked about the value of the use-case, Burris stated, “Use-case provides a number of crucial elements as we think about adopting new technology. The use-case is a way of driving consensus overall what is it that we need to do.” The key, according to Burris, is learning from the process.

“Big Data is a confluence of things in the market but also things within the business itself,” he said. “There are a lot of different moving parts and different functions and different sources of expertise, and use-cases can provide clues as to how to bring this together in order to act as one.”

Burris feels one of the most important parts of the use-case is that it should point to a way of developing metrics to determine whether we are succeeding, what new types of investments are needed and how we course-correct. For Burris, return on investment is important, but measuring progress is equally essential.

Mega trends in the market

The mega trend of digital transformation is an industry buzzword right now.

“The whole concept of digital transformation is, ‘How do I let data do the work of the business that previously might have been done by people?’” Burris said. He added that identifying how to best incorporate data and translate it into software, analytics and other resources like the Internet of Things will enable the industry to build the software to run the business.

Burris also recognized that we are nowhere near completeness in terms of Big Data and technology. He stated that there will be profound changes over the next five years.

Coming up

This Wednesday evening, on March 30, there will be a presentation by SiliconANGLE covering the relationship between Big Data and big business. Topics will cover what tools are in place and investments being made in them, using data to drive new business behaviors and focusing on operational disciplines that will not undermine creativity within the community.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of BigDataSV 2016. And make sure to weigh in during theCUBE’s live coverage of the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

Photo by SiliconANGLE