Top Big Data influencers of 2014

Big Data is an exciting technology space innovating at a pace probably never seen before. With a dynamic ecosystem and scorching pace of product development, it is easy to be left behind. However, thanks to visionaries in this ecosystem who have been able to decode the maze and set things right for us, we have been seeing successful big data use cases and implementations. 

HadoopSphere presents below its annual list of top big data influencers. This list reflects the people, products, organizations and portals that exercised the most influence on big data and ecosystem in a particular year. The influencers have been listed in the following categories:

• Analysts
• Online Media
• Products
• Social Media
• Angels
• Thought Leaders

Click here to read the methodology used.

The info-graphic below shows the Top Big Data influencers of 2014 as ranked by HadoopSphere. 

Analysts:
Mike Gualtieri	In 2013, Mike Gualtieri of Forrester had predicted that big data will be the Time person of the year. Well, it almost came true with a big data use (or misuse) case (Edward Snowden) making it to the runner up of Time person of the year. Besides occasionally playing sorcerer, Mike has remained one of the most well respected analyst in year 2014 commanding a comprehensive vison and view for the data ecosystem.
Curt Monash	If you have not been reading Curt Monash, you may have been living on an island probably. And, if you got a few incisive comments on your product, well, then you are probably part of an urban elite in this big data city. Don’t expect courtesies, just expect plain honest assessment and that too with technical depth from Curt.
Tony Baer	Consistency and clarity are the forte of Tony Baer, Ovum’s principal analyst. Presume a consistent sane advice with clear cut guidance on what to expect and what not to expect from Tony. He has remained a top influencer in big data and Hadoop ecosystem consistently for another year.
Online Media:
TDWI	With research papers, blogs, webinars and education events, TDWI continued to attract eye-balls and sponsors alike making it one of the top focused industry portals.
IBM	IBM is a technology company but runs a media machinery of its own. Its data initiatives like IBM Data Magazine, IBM Big Data Hub, Big Data University, Developer Works, Red books combined together continued to be among top traffic getters. Though the content may be in part IBM specific, overall it did a great work of educating big data community.
DZone	With ‘smart content’ for big data professionals, DZone continued to encourage community to contribute links, articles, guides and ‘refcardz’. DZone ensured both quality and good volume traffic resulting in a high influence on techies.
Products:
Spark	Do we need to say anything about this obvious choice? Apache Spark has been the flavor of all seasons since 2014 beginning. With biggest open source community in big data ecosystem, it continued to define and influence the shape of future products.
Scala	Although technically a programming language and not a product, Scala is listed here as it marches its way ahead to become a preferred language for big data programming. With both Apache Spark and Flink promoting it big time, the simplicity and power of the language became more obvious. We expect Scala to become one of the most powerful languages in few years.
Kafka	If you need to quote an example of word-of-mouth success, here it is. Apache Kafka was developed at LinkedIn and was not a part of major Hadoop distributions till early 2015. However, still it has emerged as a preferred choice for data ingestion and has seen adoption by internet companies, financial majors and travel portals among others.
Social Media:
Ben Lorica	If one has a dream twitter handle like ‘bigdata’, it may not be sheer co-incidence. It probably shows the handle owner has been talking about big data before we heard of it. Ben Lorica is the Chief Data Scientist and Director of Content Strategy for Data at O'Reilly Media, Inc and commands the ‘bigdata’ twitter handle with its impressive following.
Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro	As the President of KDnuggets, which provides analytics and data mining consulting, Gregory is a founder of KDD (Knowledge Discovery and Data mining conferences). He is one of the leading social influencers with his mentions generating huge follower interest.
Kirk Borne	Dr.Kirk Borne is Professor of Astrophysics and Computational Science at George Mason University. As a data scientist and astrophysicist, he mostly talks about big data on social media and continues to attract huge follower base.
Angel Investors:
Naval Ravikant	Entrepreneur and an angel investor, Naval Ravikant is co-founder of AngelList. Through this terrific forum and other offline activities, he has been drumming up the cause of many startups and taking them through the funding gates.
Data Collective	DCVC (aka Data Collective) is a seed and early stage venture capital fund that invests in big data companies. Its extended team consists of more than 35 “Equity Partners,” who are notable technical founders and executives, data scientists and engineers. Some of the notable portfolio companies include Blue Data, Continuity, Elasticsearch, Citus Data.
Thought Leaders:
Mike Olson	As the Chief Strategy Officer of Cloudera, Mike Olson is a leader whose vision has been driving his company and much of the Hadoop ecosystem. His unbridled passion combined with ability to foresee market dynamics makes him one of the biggest thought leaders and influencers in entire information technology arena. From marketing Hadoop to touting Impala as MPP or mentoring competitive Spark, Mike has exhibited unparalleled transformational leadership characteristics.
Merv Adrian	Merv Adrian is Research VP at Gartner and the more known face of the research company in social media and event circles. Each year Gartner somehow manages to hit a rough note with the big data vendors, be it “trough of disillusionment” or “data lake fallacy” comment. However, Merv with his astute knowledge of Hadoop ecosystem, BI world and technology lifecycles has made people understand the discordant notes to apply caution, restrain and intelligence beyond the obvious hype. And, that’s what thought leaders do – create sense and path out of chaos and conflicts. Pro Tip: Merv may not agree with you but will still have you and him understand a common path.

<< Top big data influencers of 2013

Top big data influencers of 2015 >>