Cloud, and big data go well together

A recent study by North Bridge Venture Partners found that more companies are becoming comfortable with the cloud. While executives were once afraid to place enterprise data in the cloud, they are now ready to store their unstructured data in scalable cloud systems and analyze it for business value.

"[T]he identification of 'cloud formations' around the hottest business trends including big data and analytics by both vendors and IT decision-makers alike highlights new opportunities for [the] cloud," said North Bridge partner Michael Skok.

Respondents to the survey were unequivocal in their support for big data in the cloud. Users chose analytics as the most important program type to place in the cloud, followed by big data storage. Big data was also hotly tipped as a market set to be changed by the addition of the cloud, with 80 percent of respondents predicting such a shift.

Cloud and big data also share one attribute that companies may struggle with, according to tech blogger Ray Wang. He recently stated that both the cloud and unstructured data have proven so popular that they have dealt with an influx of vendors and offerings – so many that confusion may arise.