A few years back, the promise of big data was overblown by open-source zealots who thought value would magically spring from fathoms-deep data lakes. The reality that highly intelligent tools are necessary to fish out insights before the window to value closes has since sunk in. That is why artificial intelligence and machine learning have replaced big data as the buzziest terms in tech.

Big-data mania brought attention to the importance of data and prompted technologists to invest more in AI and ML. This is why AI and ML tools for data analytics are enjoying copious fertilizer from investors and vendors. The main sell is shortening time to value, which might have been as much as 18 months in the Apache Hadoop world of a few years ago.

“When you talk about AI, ML and deep learning, the promise is that a business user should be able to get answers in a much, much shorter window,” said Stu Miniman, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

The latest breed of tools takes on the deluge of incoming data with flexible, real-time tooling, so users can “live the way your data lives,” Miniman said. 

Miniman and co-host Dave Vellante spoke during Splunk Inc.’s .conf18 event in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. They discussed Splunk’s new announcements, including a new platform release, and how they fit into the new, AI-driven big-data landscape. (* Disclosure below.)

Surf’s up: AI and ML conquer the waves

Splunk’s product set has evolved in step with the big-data movement. It has gone from analyzing log files on-premises in a perpetual-license model to permeating all of information technology — security, application performance and the like — and lines of business. The company is sporting some impressive results lately, including a $1.7 billion security revenue forecast for the year, according to Vellante.

“You have to be able to organize your data in the moment,” Vellante said. Splunk is at the forefront of vendors providing tools to surf the data waves as they hit. The company announced Splunk Enterprise 7.2 today, which mercifully splits storage and compute for customers.

“And they’re cozying up to Amazon doing S3 compatible storage,” Vellante said. Additional announcements include Splunk MLTK, an application for AI use cases that works with the TensorFlow open-source engine for building AI models, and MLib, a scalable machine-learning library from Apache Spark.

Here’s the complete analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Splunk .conf18 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Splunk .conf18. Neither Splunk Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE