<p>The traditional SQL database is under siege by modern information stores that can process larger volumes of data designed for the cloud era more rapidly. Here's your guide to what's going on in the big data world and the major players to watch.</p><p>Unless you've been living under a rock, you know one of the biggest drivers of IT and cloud computing initiatives is the need to gather, process, store and analyze -- often in real time -- "big data."</p><p>Businesses and government agencies alike are stepping up initiatives where they're mining everything from their CRM systems and data feeds to tweets mentioning their organizations that can alert them to a sudden problem with a product to a potential market opportunity spawned by an event. Online and big-box retailers are using big data to automate their supply chains on the fly. Law enforcement is analyzing huge amounts of data to thwart potential crime and terror attacks.</p><p>Big data drove an estimated $28 billion in IT spending last year, according to market researcher Gartner Inc. That figure will rise to $34 billion this year, Gartner estimates. In addition to pulling data in from social networks, a growing number of big data applications involve machine data from sensors, telemetry systems and other non-human interfaces -- as well as large volumes of unstructured content -- in order to determine trends to deliver insights and intelligence in near-real-time. Gartner noted 10 percent of new IT spending on application infrastructure and middleware is in some way influenced by big data.</p><p><a href="http://redmondmag.com/articles/2013/05/01/buried-in-big-data.aspx">Keep reading...</a></p>