Dear Big Data friends and colleagues,

Our second ISC Big Data conference will take place at the beginning of October and we will build on multiple pillars: the positive experience from our inaugural event, the global strength of the main ISC conference that gather 2500 experts from the High Performance Community each year, and the co-scheduled ISC Cloud event just prior to ISC Big Data.

However, the strongest pillar is undoubtedly the fact that the interest in Big Data is unabated. A continuously growing number of enterprises and institutes realise that there is substantial value to be obtained by taking a correct approach to harnessing such data. Centre-stage Hadoop is evolving rapidly, but there are many additional software offerings from a slew of companies, both well-established and start-ups. In this sea of both hardware and software offerings, it is extremely important to get information regarding use cases others have successfully implemented. Particularly interesting is advanced analytics which is based on sophisticated data visualization and seen as a key element in bringing out value.

One exciting addition in the Big Data landscape is the Internet-of-Things (IoT). Manufacturers and enterprises are at the point of deploying sensors in millions – probably billions within a few years – and this will contribute to the world’s total amount of data in a massive way. It goes without saying that such data volumes must be accompanied by appropriate organizational structures and many enterprises are beginning to reorganize themselves to be fully prepared.

If the data is not dealt with carefully enough, Big Data may also imply “Big Concerns” and data privacy can definitely be one of them. As corporations harvest enough data from each person to create a complete “image” of him or her, it can start to look somewhat intimidating. Perhaps even conjuring up fears of a future similar to “1984” or similar stories so the topic definitely merits a thorough review, both in Europe and in the rest of the World.

The ISC Big Data’14 conference aims at covering all these areas and targets technical experts and key IT decision makers in the domain of Big Data. During two full days, the forum will do a deep dive into these exciting topics in order to empower people eager to quench their thirst for better knowledge.

Together with the ISC Events team I look forward to welcoming you.

Sverre Jarp / CERN
ISC Big Data’14 General Chair