Big data is all about the cloud

Big data isn't about real-time vs. batch processing. It's not a question of either/or, as Ovum analyst Tony Baer and others stress. Given the broad range of options and workloads that make up a successful big data strategy, this isn't surprising or controversial. More controversial, though perhaps not surprising, is the nature of the infrastructure required to get the most from big data. For example, AWS (Amazon Web Services) data science chief Matt Wood warns that, while "analytics is addictive," this positive addiction quickly turns sour if your infrastructure can't keep up. The key to big data success, Wood says, is more than Spark or Hadoop. It's running both on elastic infrastructure.