We just closed out the fourth Big Data Summit in 8 months this week. This time we brought big data and advanced analytics to downtown DC and it proved to have some fantastic sessions. Here’s a quick recap. I’ll link presenter’s slides to this post as they come available:

- Curt Monash was our keynote speaker, kicking off the event and providing some great context. Titled “Implications of New Analytic Technology,” Curt was able to raise a number of issues to consider as technology advances to enable big data analytics, not the least of which is legislative implications which need to be considered. (Check out Curt’s wrap on his talk at his DBMS2 blog.)

- Will Duckworth from comScore detailed the technical requirements around their highly successful MediaMetrix 360 product which has resulted in a flood of 10 billion rows per day of new data entering the Aster Data system. (In addition to the slides below, Will discusses more in this video.)

Utilizing Aster nCluster to support processing in excess of 100 Billion rows per month

- Matt Ipri from MicroStrategy discussed how customers benefit from using MicroStrategy with systems like Aster Data because of their “database aware” BI platform. Their integration with Aster Data around SQL-MapReduce is also likely one of the reasons we won their Technology Innovation award at MicroStrategy World earlier this year.

BI at Scale

- Michelle Wilkie from SAS described the advanced in-database analytics initiative they have to push more of the data mining process into DBMSs like Aster Data. SAS is using Aster Data’s SQL-MapReduce to accomplish this with Aster Data nCluster, providing statistical integrity of results.

SAS In-Database

- Tasso Argyros, CTO and CO-Founder of Aster Data, described the requirements for managing and analyzing big data, advanced analytic use-cases, and how Aster Data nCluster uniquely providers customers with a next-generation data analytics platform to do more.

- Jim Kobielus from Forrester Research joined the other speakers during a lunch panel, which proved to be exciting given the amount of innovation coming from distributed computing methods like MapReduce which are finding their way into commercial applications. Of note was a question from the audience around the right type of education background to look for when hiring analytics professionals. The answered ranged from “philosophy” to “engineering” and everything in between! Apparently, you need passion for analytics more than anything else. None of that was lacking in our panel.

Stay tuned for more summits on big data and advanced analytics from Aster Data. Chicago is up next and we’ll be firming up dates shortly. And if you can’t make it to the next event, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AsterData. There was some great conversation around the event there.