The ‘big data’ trend is finding its way into many verticals, from product launches to raising funds, supercomputing to virtual lab rats.

Last week started with Xsigo‘s update to its virtual data center fabric offering.  The update provides easier administration and reduces time spent on networking tasks in the datacenter.  It works with the company’s existing Xsigo’s I/O Director, XMS Management Software and Fabric Extenders products to form the Xsigo Server Fabric. The Xsigo Server Fabric allows connection of hardware components in the networking layer to leverage various resources without having to configure switches, switch ports, or VLANs. This reduces the management tasks and time spent on datacenter activities.

There’s also Astute Network, which added a flash memory module based single Astute ViSX G3 appliance to VMware virtualized environments.  The appliance boosts VMware I/O performance by 1,500 percent and adds more than 80,000 read performance per second to virtualized environments.

We had a couple of updates from HP as well.  The company provided an update to its Business Intelligence Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) mapping software, helping companies to track entire systems, applications and processes without the need to shut down the system.  This update from HP is an important step in BI services, as it leverages companies to execute projects and processes, all in the cloud.

HP with its webOS platform is looking at licensing appliances and automobile solutions for this software and plans to broaden the software platform on a variety of connected devices. Currently, webOS supports HP’s tablets and smartphones.

There was an update from Microsoft cloud based storage as well.  Microsoft, in an attempt to attract a wider developer community that runs smaller apps on its Azure platform, decided to cut the price of its extra small compute by 20 percent and allocate more small computing hours for developers and SME enterprises to provide better services.  This move can be seen as Microsoft’s approach to lure more SME and developers and taking its Azure platform to other verticals, including ERP and healthcare solution.

DataDirect storage systems pitched out a few milestones last week, too.  DataDirect’s data storage and processing solution now runs with more than 60 percent of the top 50 fastest computer storage systems.  It now powers over 19,500 TeraFlops/s of compute power for the top 500 companies.  The figure reveals how more and more technology companies in the world are looking to big data solutions to process, store, manage and understand their data and content.

We have also seen the future of big data through wireless tattoos, IBM’s evolving brain chip and virtual laboratory rats, predicting how one day big data will transform human lives.  The wireless tattoo, developed by Northwestern University engineering professor Yonggang Huang, will be used to monitor your heart or brain activity.  The tattoo that can be implemented in your skin and stay on the skin temporarily, will be helpful to check heart activities, brain functions and wound treatments.

Then there is marriage of big data and bioinformatics that give birth to virtual laboratory rats.  Daniel Beard, an expert and computational biologist from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, is working on a revolutionary concept of creating virtual lab rats. Virtual lab rats, unlike real rats, will be controlled by computer chips and are simulation of healthy hearts, kidneys, skeletal muscles and blood vessels. They will be used to treat diseases like high blood pressure and heart failure, enabling researchers to leverage data in order to run models in a virtual sense, bypassing any harm to real animals.

IBM is also making strides in conceptualizing the Virtual Brain through its supercomputer projects like the Blue Brain and the Blue Gene. The virtual brain is brain made out of a computer but would functions like a human brain, for scientific and medical research and advancement.  It’s because of data and research that IBM’s able to take on such a feat, and the continued rapid analysis of data will allow computers to take on more “characteristics” that will help it learn on its own.