About once every five years or so, the technology industry blazes a new path of innovation. The PC, the Internet, smart mobility and social networking have emerged over the past 20 plus years, delivering new technologies and business ecosystems that have fundamentally changed the world. The latest catalyst is Big Data.
Nearly every major new computing era in the past has had a hot IPO provide a catalyst for more widespread adoption of the shift. The recent Splunk IPO evokes parallels with Netscape, the company that provided the catalyst in 1995 to a wave of Internet computing for both B2C and B2B marketplaces. It ushered in a wave of new innovation and a plethora of new .com businesses. Hundreds of billions of dollars in new value was subsequently created and business environments changed forever.