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Quarterly Wrap-ups

Infrastructure Q4: Big data gets bigger and SaaS startups shine

Summary:

Continuing a yearlong trend, the fourth quarter in big IT was all about big data, and Hadoop in particular. Still, many are beginning to recognize the software framework’s shortcomings, which is why this quarter also saw more attention for startups claiming easy analytics and real-time processing. Elsewhere in infrastructure, SaaS startups made out well and valuations for these companies are getting higher, and naturally there was news from the AWS camp. This quarterly wrap-up examines these events and more, including the quarter’s dark spot, the hike in prices in the hard-drive manufacturing space due to the floods in Thailand. Companies mentioned in this report include Calxeda, Heroku, Rackspace, Salesforce.com and Tier3. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

  1. Table of contents
  2. Executive summary
  3. The cloud
    1. AWS: All about the numbers (and security)
    2. Can you be PaaS and not be polyglot?
    3. Known names, new services
    4. Still waiting for the government to affect the cloud
    5. If you’re doing private cloud, it’ll likely be open source
    6. SaaS = money ... lots of it
  4. Web infrastructure
    1. The new world of web programming
    2. Data centers: Expanding fast, but getting cleaner
    3. Yahoo losing tech ground to Facebook
    4. The new network is an open network
  5. Hardware
    1. Bye, bye, spinning disks (again)
    2. The dark side of hardware emerges
    3. Intel still can’t sleep at the wheel
  6. Big data
    1. Lots of investment, but no big data bubble
    2. Big data, meet everything
    3. Big data, big science, big pipes
    4. Big data for the greater good
    5. Hadoop’s civil war begins (and hopefully ends)
  7. Near-term outlook
  8. Key takeaways
  9. About Derrick Harris
  10. About GigaOM Pro