Even before Governor Patrick announced the Massachusetts Big Data Initiative in May, the state had already established itself as the big data capital of the world. We have 12,000 people employed in the sector in more than 100 companies. We have big money flowing from venture capital ($350 million in 2011) to fund local startups offering new solutions. We are also already home to storage giant EMC, which lends further credibility to this burgeoning field.
But while this is all good news, there remains a major hurdle: Most enterprises have no idea what to do with all of this data that’s growing exponentially every second. And big data companies cannot sell their products without doing a better job of explaining “so what?”
