Medio and The Future of Big Data Analytics

Why I Joined the Advisory BoD of Medio Systems

Today, I'm thrilled to announce that I've joined the advisory Board of Directors of Medio Systems.  

Over the past nine months, I've had a chance to work with Brian Lent, Rob Lilleness and many of the other folks on the team at Medio.  I've been approached by dozens of "Big Data" companies over the past two to three years as more people have begun to focus on large-scale database challenges.  Medio is one of the few companies that I've chosen to work with directly because they're creatively tackling some of the most pressing challenges, including: 

• Big Data Analytics in Real Time:  Over the past 10 years I've watched as database systems have become more and more "real time": as data is generated, users expect to see that data and be able to analyze it immediately.  Medio has created a  platform that enables its customers to analyze their data in real time without the daily-latency constraints of traditional data warehouse solutions. Incredibly powerful. 

• Mobile/Tablet Devices: As I sit here writing this blog post, my wife and father-in-law are playing Words with Friends on their respective iPads. Two years ago, my wife told me she would never use an iPad. Now, she's addicted. Mobile/tablet devices matter, and they generate a wealth of Big Data that can help businesses understand and get closer to their customers than ever before. The Medio team has uniquely deep experience with mobile app analytics.

• Democratizing Analytics: As we were building Vertica back in 2005-2010, it became clear to me that once people had figured out how to represent their data more efficiently, the bottleneck would quickly become how to enable regular people (not just database experts or business analysts) to take advantage of the data and use the data plus statistics to ask complex questions and solve cool problems.  Medio's focus has been on empowering business people with the tools necessary to make better business decisions, truly democratizing analytics.  

• Analytics Made Easy: I watched dozens of our customers at Vertica deploy solutions that required them to integrate database technologies with reporting and visualization tools and then tune/tweak those tools and the integrations. This turned out to be a  never-ending problem that distracted them from the actual problems and questions they were trying to analyze. Customers didn't want to be experts at database systems or visualization: what they wanted were tools to help them answer business questions faster and more effectively. Medio has created the infrastructure that enables  customers to focus on asking and getting answers to their questions without worrying about how the underlying technology works.  

• Predictive Capabilities: I strongly believe that analytic systems must have forward-looking/predictive capabilities. Just analyzing history is no longer enough. The next wave of analytic systems will empower users to anticipate what might happen in the future and model the potential impact of decisions they make today, leveraging history as the basis for those models.  Medio CTO Brian Lent has been an early proponent and tireless champion of using information to help support decision-making with predictive capabilities. His vision and the technology the Medio team has created are unique.  

To see for yourself, check out Medio.  This is a company worth watching.