Steve Ballmer on Microsoft and Big Data

InformationWeek quoting Steve Ballmer:

Nobody plays in big data, really, except Microsoft and Google

[…]

I’ll use the word ‘data’ rather than ‘BI’ because that says I want to use all the world’s information… not just the information that we figured out how to capture inside our corporate system.

[…]

The explosion in the use of data is not always in a traditional BI-ish way, and that’s a big thing for us

But what is behind these words? The InformationWeek article builds around Steve Balmer’s vision that based on the knowledge gained creating and operating Bing and AdCenter, Microsoft is better prepared to handle BigData than EMC, HP, IBM, Oracle, and Teradata. While this can be true, there’s an important difference to draw here: creating and operating internal processes and tools is a different business than developing, selling, and supporting tools for customers. Microsoft has experience in both these fields, but their current products are not yet combining the know-how in these two areas. Meanwhile the companies mentioned above, plus quite a few startups, and open source projects are betting their future on this market alone by staying focused.

Original title and link: Steve Ballmer on Microsoft and Big Data (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

via: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/bi/230700013