History of big data

Big data, and its associated computing and storage needs, has had a significant impact on the data centre industry. The data centre, or bit barn, is an organisation’s brain. It takes in, stores, analyses, and disseminates all the data the organisation needs. As the amount of data generated has exploded in recent years, so data centres have been forced to evolve and grow. History of big data: before 1980, companies used mainframe computers to store and analyse data. Two key technologies were critical to the first formations of data centers as we think of them today. Both occurred in the early 1980s; the first was the advent of personal computers (PCs), which proliferated as Microsoft’s Windows operating software became the global standard. The second was the development of the network system protocol by Sun Microsystems, which enabled PC users to access network files. Thereafter, microcomputers begin to fill out mainframe rooms as servers, and the rooms become known as data centers.
A number of critical milestones since then changed the evolution of the industry, including the emergence of virtualisation software and the shift towards cloud computing. These and other major milestones in the journey of the big data theme are set out in the timeline below.

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Airbyte Racks Up Awards from InfoWorld, BigDATAwire, Built In; Builds Largest and Fastest-Growing User Community

Airbyte | January 30, 2024

Airbyte, creators of the leading open-source data movement infrastructure, today announced a series of accomplishments and awards reinforcing its standing as the largest and fastest-growing data movement community. With a focus on innovation, community engagement, and performance enhancement, Airbyte continues to revolutionize the way data is handled and processed across industries. “Airbyte proudly stands as the front-runner in the data movement landscape with the largest community of more than 5,000 daily users and over 125,000 deployments, with monthly data synchronizations of over 2 petabytes,” said Michel Tricot, co-founder and CEO, Airbyte. “This unparalleled growth is a testament to Airbyte's widespread adoption by users and the trust placed in its capabilities.” The Airbyte community has more than 800 code contributors and 12,000 stars on GitHub. Recently, the company held its second annual virtual conference called move(data), which attracted over 5,000 attendees. Airbyte was named an InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award finalist: Data Management – Integration (in October) for cutting-edge products that are changing how IT organizations work and how companies do business. And, at the start of this year, was named to the Built In 2024 Best Places To Work Award in San Francisco – Best Startups to Work For, recognizing the company's commitment to fostering a positive work environment, remote and flexible work opportunities, and programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Today, the company received the BigDATAwire Readers/Editors Choice Award – Big Data and AI Startup, which recognizes companies and products that have made a difference. Other key milestones in 2023 include the following. Availability of more than 350 data connectors, making Airbyte the platform with the most connectors in the industry. The company aims to increase that to 500 high-quality connectors supported by the end of this year. More than 2,000 custom connectors were created with the Airbyte No-Code Connector Builder, which enables data connectors to be made in minutes. Significant performance improvement with database replication speed increased by 10 times to support larger datasets. Added support for five vector databases, in addition to unstructured data sources, as the first company to build a bridge between data movement platforms and artificial intelligence (AI). Looking ahead, Airbyte will introduce data lakehouse destinations, as well as a new Publish feature to push data to API destinations. About Airbyte Airbyte is the open-source data movement infrastructure leader running in the safety of your cloud and syncing data from applications, APIs, and databases to data warehouses, lakes, and other destinations. Airbyte offers four products: Airbyte Open Source, Airbyte Self-Managed, Airbyte Cloud, and Powered by Airbyte. Airbyte was co-founded by Michel Tricot (former director of engineering and head of integrations at Liveramp and RideOS) and John Lafleur (serial entrepreneur of dev tools and B2B). The company is headquartered in San Francisco with a distributed team around the world. To learn more, visit airbyte.com.

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