New U.S. Research Will Aim at Flood of Digital Data
The federal government is beginning a major research initiative in big data computing. The effort, which will be announced on Thursday, involves several government agencies and departments, and commitments for the programs total $200 million.
Context & Ripple Effects
A December 2011 report framed sorting data held in the cloud as a key opening for start-ups taking on larger incumbents. The federal initiative brings coordinated public research funding into the same computing challenge, rather than leaving progress solely to private-sector product development.
The $200 million commitment across agencies and departments matters because it concentrates resources around the infrastructure and methods needed to handle expanding digital data volumes.
First-order effects
- Federal agencies and departments gain a shared, $200 million-backed research agenda for big-data computing, directing public funding toward the field.
Second-order effects
- Start-ups working on cloud-data sorting face a market in which federally backed research programs can shape which technical problems and capabilities receive early institutional support.
Third-order effects
- If multiagency funding becomes a recurring model, data-intensive computing may increasingly depend on coordinated pools of public capital alongside venture-backed start-ups and established technology companies.
The trend: Big-data computing is becoming a strategic infrastructure field in which the scale of data pushes investment beyond individual companies toward coordinated funding programs.