Big Data continues to provide a spark for Splunk. The enterprise software maker late Thursday reported third-quarter results that beat analyst estimates as demand escalates for its analytics software, which helps companies better manage the growing reams of electronic information coming from websites, mobile devices and other sources. Splunk’s (SPLK) revenue forecast was also ahead of views. Shares jumped more than 9% in after-hours trading.
Some of tech’s biggest giants might ultimately claim the largest share of the emerging multibillion-dollar Big Data market, though they are playing catch-up. Oracle (ORCL), SAP (SAP) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) are scrambling to tackle Big Data and compete with nimble newcomers such as Splunk (SPLK) and Tableau Software (DATA). Big Data in general describes the large volume of data companies are accumulating from multiple sources in the digital age,
What is Big Data? The answer’s not so easy. Going back a couple of decades, the definition seemed to be to quantify what was meant by “big.” People have used terms like “Big Data,” “Very Large Data” or “Massive Data” with specific data volume measurements (gigabytes, terabytes) to quantify a definition of what constitutes a vast amount of electronic data. John Mashey, a former chief scientist for high-end computer maker Silicon Graphics (SGI),