For a year or more big data market observers, including SiliconAngle Media Co-CEO John Furrier, have been expecting off-the-shelf, packaged applications to appear to simplify the complexity of build-it-yourself, custom installations. Now, the first applications are finally appearing, writes Wikibon Lead Big Data and Analytics Analyst George Gilbert,  but instead of the enterprise resource planning (ERP)-like complex systems of the past, they are what he calls “micro apps” focused on a few high-value use cases such as money laundering detection.

The reason that these first reusable applications have taken so long to appear and are so far limited in function, he says, is that big data is aimed at a new set of complex use cases. These are not yet well enough understood to support generalization in reusable applications.

Systems of record, such as ERP and corporate financials, automate well-defined processes that are applicable across multiple industries. Big data-based systems of intelligence are focused on use cases such as anticipating the needs of individual customers that are both complex and not easily reduced to if-then type processes. However, some individual applications are being better defined and can be generalized, and these are being codified into the micro apps now appearing in the big data marketplace.

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