Anjul Bhambhri, the Vice President of Big Data and Streams at IBM, sat down at theCube with Dave Vellante during this week’s Strata event to discuss big data and what we are seeing in the customer base regarding data.

Bhambhri, who’s provided us an excellent vision of what we can expect of big data in 2013, explains how, recently, there has been a lot of activity regarding data collection, experimentation, and analysis, but that there is an established set of five common use cases we are seeing amongst companies. The first of these use cases is data exploration, as companies are trying to understand what data resources are available, how to tap into those resources, what can be gained from gathering this data, and, of course, what the value is.

The second use case is customer analysis, as businesses evaluate what customers feel about their brand, what sentiments are attached to the products they offer, and how to better service the customers. Next, companies are now expanding their data resources, pulling from sources outside their own enterprise, and including many different types of data, besides those they are already familiar dealing with. Bhambhri explains that enterprises are all-around augmenting and expanding their data warehouses, which is the third use case.

Security is another department where we are seeing a lot of data deployments, Bhambhri states, with specific areas such as network security and cyber security.  Last, but not least, is operational analysis, with analysis on factors such as machine, log and sensor data.

Bhambhri reminds us that these five use cases do not represent the entire world of data, but at the moment, this is where she is observing the most activity and development.

See Bhambhri’s full segment below, and see our entire line up of exclusive interviews from Strata on our YouTube playlist here.