It seems like every week there’s a story in the news about some fascinating new use for Big Data, be it revealing dating people’s preferences or CIA-level spying. What this buzz belies is the relative newness of this technology and the ongoing frustration some IT professionals feel in trying to standardize it for use in software and applications. Host Dave Vellante of

Dave Vellante and George Gilbert, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, spoke to a customer panel about these issues at the Spark Summit East 2016. The panel included Beth Logan, senior director of optimization at DataXu; Danny Rogers, CEO of Terbium Labs; and Tamer Hassan, CTO of White Op.

Vellante cited a past report that showed that for every dollar companies were spending on Big Data research, they were receiving a 50-cent return. Hassan argued that while those figures paint a dismal picture, the truth is that the return would ultimately find the investors because Big Data is rich with possibilities we are presently capturing. “Unicorns aren’t found; they’re made,” he said, justifying the investment.

That new technology smell

The panel guests agreed that great strides are being made every day to exploit data’s full potential. Logan spoke about the collaborative efforts at her company to pool knowledge and work toward goals. “We have planning every few weeks to see how we can do against those goals,” she said.

Rogers said that the kinks in the new technologies will in time be worked out, but, “They still have that, for lack of a better phrase, new technology smell to them.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Spark Summit East 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE