During BigDataSV 2016, discussion continues to swirl around data-driven business, data innovations, and data science and advanced analytics. And businesses continue to assess Hadoop use-cases, enterprise adoption and what’s beyond Hadoop and Spark.

BigDataSV 2016, where theCUBE is celebrating #BigDataWeek, including news and events from the #StrataHadoop conference, is into its third day and winding down and ingesting the information from the event. The main topic at hand: Where is the business value?

To discuss these topics and uncover the value of Big Data, John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, were joined by Bill Schmarzo, chief technology officer of EMC Global Services, Big Data Practice, and Carey James, business development manager of Big Data Solutions at EMC.

Will it be killer apps?

“I’ve always wrestled with this idea that every new market thrust has to have a killer app,” said Schmarzo. “So people scratch their heads and say, ‘What’s the killer app for Big Data?’ Is it Hadoop? Or is it Spark now? Or is it something else? And I actually think the killer apps are what the customers are building.”

Schmarzo feels the value creation in the Big Data space isn’t in the software being developed but in the apps companies are building that are extracting value so unique to business that they are actually transforming their business models.

He pointed to Burris’ research about the future “winners” being software and said that the software will increasingly supersede consultants. He pointed out that the consultant skills are finding their way into lots of smaller products that are taking over piecemeal jobs.

Will action bring value?

“We have a saying at EMC: Action without insight is useless. The action brings the value,” James said. He said that managing the data is not where the value comes from and that by working with smaller organizations to differentiate them in their industry is what brings value.

James added that applications are growing but they still see the need for services. “We are working to build an ecosystem, similar to the iPhone app store where you have different applications that are not generic but are the basis for starting that,” he said. “We see the Platform as a Service (PaaS), the third platform embedded applications, mobile, and we see that trend growing.”

Managing the warehouse, managing the datalakes and making it easy to consume that information makes it easy to understand the value. Moving data away from only the “realm of the few,” the data scientist, and making it accessible to application developers and the business analysts also provides value.

Will changing the ecosystem bring value? 

When asked about his view on datalakes, Schmarzo said, “It’s a challenge. We failed at data warehousing.” He continued by noting that the industry failed to provide compelling value to the business with siloed information, saying that companies should learn from the failure of data warehouses and make certain data is mined in a way that helps businesses make better decisions.

“Silos are anti-data science,” exclaimed Schmarzo. Both Schmarzo and Carey agreed that data scientists are frustrated by managing the process and not having the time to deliver insights.

“Insights are the holy grail,” James said. And he feels it is necessary to set up the ecosystem for companies getting actionable insights that they can embed into the business processes.

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 at the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

Photo by SiliconANGLE