Wrapping up a year of impressive growth and product innovation, Gazzang, the Linux data security company, today made its 2013 predictions covering emerging trends in big data, the cloud and open source technology adoption.

“Buoyed by increasing adoption of and trust in cloud technologies, big data will move out of the shadows and start to creep into the boardroom,” said Larry Warnock, CEO of Gazzang. “While big data is already a conversation topic at most enterprises, it’s traditionally been relegated to IT and development projects. Next year, these organizations will start to see big data as a solution for driving better business intelligence, product innovation and customer service.”

Additional Gazzang predictions include:

• The first significant big data company acquisitions will happen, signaling a shift in focus from proof-of-concept projects to high-business-value implementations/rollouts.
• Vertical line of business applications on top of big data will start to explode, with some early examples already starting to emerge in retail, financial services and oil and gas.
• What IBM does, others eventually follow. To that end, the industry will see more corporate policy established around cloud storage such as Dropbox – and more technical solutions developed to enforce these policies.
• Product differentiation will focus less on infrastructure and more on application and service layers. As a result, more big brands will start open sourcing their architecture to encourage adoption and attract development talent, similar to what Netflix and Disney are already doing.
• OpenStack is not overhyped as suggested by Gartner, but will succeed as an alternative to Amazon by providing security features such as default encryption and cloud entropy/randomization, and deliver solutions for companies that want on-premises cloud infrastructure.
• A damaging big data breach will cause the market to question holes and vulnerabilities in NoSQL infrastructure.
• As encryption and multi-factor authentication become more broadly adopted for cloud security, key management will become the new challenge. Solutions will need to provide strong policy enforcement and compliance capabilities, while maintaining high levels of flexibility and availability.
• Audit and compliance mandates will be imposed on the "wild west" of big data projects. On a related note, we will see the first big rash of class-action lawsuits related to big data breaches, adding millions of dollars to the costs of these incidents.
• Higher integration of structured and unstructured data will lead to greater insights for organizations and drive even greater adoption of big data.

About Gazzang

Gazzang provides Linux data security solutions and operational diagnostics that help enterprises protect sensitive information and maintain performance in cloud environments. Gazzang is backed by Austin Ventures and Silver Creek Ventures. For more information, visit www.gazzang.com.

• Gazzang Predicts 2013: The Year Big Data Goes Big Time