What’s so big about Big Data? It’s probably bigger than you think. For some time now, the specialty data warehouse (DW) has been a technology proposition in search of a market. DW appliance pioneer Netezza Inc. -- acquired by IBM Corp. in mid-2010 -- hemorrhaged cash for the first few years of its existence. (Netezza enjoyed its first yearly profit 18 months after its IPO.) Ditto for DATAllegro Corp., which ...

Millions of tweets run through Twitter. It's the poster child for big data on the Web. To get data out of Twitter and use it to track sentiment requires tools with considerable processing and computational capabilities. BigSheets is a tool created by IBM that takes terabytes or even petabytes of Web data and turns it into information that provides business intelligence. The tool can be used for structured o ...