This week in big data was full of commentary, in addition to some notable product updates, which provides a glimpse at the future of this industry-wide movement.

Flow’s launch is the first update on our list, which I also discuss in my cloud roundup. The reason for this is that the startup has come up with a rather interesting idea that brings together big data with cloud-based apps, a concept recognized by pundits – some of whom stopped by The Cube on several occasions – as the key for a whole new level of service. That in turn results in competitive edge, which is why data-driven apps are expected to become a trend of their own.

Going back to the topic at hand, what Flow offers is a hosted software solution that collects and manages data from applications. It can eventually be used by marketers to identify user behavior and reactions to in-app elements such as apps.

SAP is also getting deeper into the analytics game, in an attempt to catch up with some of its competitors in the BI space. BusinessObjects Predictive Analytics is one of the latest initiatives in the works, and this week we learned exactly how it is expected to be integrated into the rest of SAP’s portfolio.

Next up is Infineta, a company that deals with the ‘big traffic’ side of big data. It has received some praise from research firm Ovum for the way its technology handles this type of massive traffic, which is notable considering the networking solutions maker didn’t commission the study.

The last highlight is a bit of commentary Matt Weinberger posted here about Yammer’s addition of a metrics dashboard to its platform, and how the term big data plays a key role in actually shaping enterprises’ petabyte-scale insight.