We’re witnessing the emergence of a new stack, where Big Data technologies are used to handle core data engineering challenges, and machine learning is used to extract value from the data (in the form of analytical insights, or actions).
In other words: Big Data provides the pipes, and AI provides the smarts.
Of course, this symbiotic relationship has existed for years, but its implementation was only available to a privileged few.
The democratization of those technologies has now started in earnest. “Big Data + AI” is becoming the default stack upon which many modern applications (whether targeting consumers or enterprise) are being built. Both startups and some Fortune 1000 companies are leveraging this new stack…
Often, but not always, the cloud is the third leg of the stool. This trend is precipitated by all the efforts of the cloud giants, who are now in an open war to provide access to a machine learning cloud.