An analytical database management software company, Vertica was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2011. Since then, Vertica has helped in the development of such software as HAVEn, useful for analyzing Big Data leveraging the Hadoop open source software.

Recently, Dave Vellante and Jeff Frick of theCUBE spoke with Chris Selland, Head Business Developer at HP Vertica, during the HP Discover Las Vegas 2014 event.

The state of Big Data

Vellante first asked Selland about the state of Big Data and its status in the marketplace. Selland responded by talking about how everyone is realizing just how important Big Data can be to their company. This has caused many companies to shift focus on how they handle their data.

The biggest problem that customers have when dealing with the massive amounts of data they generate on a daily basis is that they aren’t sure how to deal with all of the technology used to manage and assess the data. The desire is there, but the infrastructure within many companies cannot support the new data types.

“All of this social data, machine data, Internet of things data; traditional EDWs were not built to handle any of this,” Selland said. “They can’t scale, they don’t perform, and they’re way too expensive. So, they want to get in on new technology, but they haven’t really figured out how yet.”

Vertica’s approach to Big Data

When asked how Vertica approached data storage, especially in light of its use of Hadoop, Selland explained that the terminology the company has been using is “store, explore, and serve.” Based on this philosophy, the team at Vertica feel there is no good reason to throw away data.

According to Selland, though, “Storing it and just sort of putting it in one place, particularly if you don’t have it in a form that can be analyzed, isn’t enough. Then you have to be able to explore it, look at it, see what I’ve got, and figure out what I might be able to do with it.”

Ultimately, however, unless that data is served to the customer, there is no value to it. This includes serving the data up in such a way that companies can actually put that data to use, especially to the decision makers who use that data to make a change to their business model. This relationship between customer and provider is creating a whole new ecosystem.

• Staying the course

When asked about Vertica’s more neutral and open approach working with the different technologies available, Selland explained that it is to HP’s advantage to remain customer friendly with its open approach and continue to offer customers freedom of choice. And while it creates more work on HP’s side of things, customers continue to want that from HP. In response, the company has chosen to stay the course they are on, and so far HP has been happy with the results.