Battery Ventures Brings Together Technologists From Leading Corporate IT and Web Giants to Explore Common Ground in Cloud, Big Data and Infrastructure

WALTHAM, MA and MENLO PARK, CA and HERZLIYA, ISRAEL--(Marketwire - May 15, 2012) - Battery Ventures, a multi-stage investment firm focused on technology and innovation worldwide, hosted its 2^nd annual Big IT Meets Big Web event on May 2^nd. The event's premise is that technologies pioneered and in mainstream use in the "big web" community are migrating quickly over to the enterprise IT world, as companies of all kinds move to scale their technology infrastructure to handle the huge amounts of data, traffic and compute power their businesses require.

George Brady, Fidelity Investments' EVP of Distributed Hosting Infrastructure Services, kicked the morning off with a look at how Fidelity is embracing open source and moving to the cloud. The event also featured a special guest talk from well-known Data Scientist DJ Patil (view video).

Panels on Cloud and Big Data rounded out the day, with discussion focused on what's working and not working as companies migrate to the cloud and work to make sense of the terabytes of data being produced by their businesses.

Megatrends in Cloud, Big Data and Infrastructure
A few important themes, predictions and observations from the day's discussion included:

• One size does not fit all: When considering cloud vs. on premise deployment options, a detailed understanding of your application's characteristics is required. Anything less is a gross oversimplification.
  
  
• We all love Hadoop, but it's still early: Hadoop has widespread adoption, but there are still tremendous improvements needed to both simplify operations and expand the number of users who can practically ask questions of big data infrastructure.
  
  
• IT is not commoditizing: On the one hand, things in IT are easier and cheaper than ever before. But that doesn't mean IT is commoditizing, it's changing; innovation will transform IT's role into a business differentiator as IT groups help deliver bottom line value.

View video of panelists and attendee observations and predictions.

Thoughts from Battery
"We hosted BIBW 2012 to move beyond the hype and jargon surrounding IT infrastructure. We invited leading infrastructure practitioners to talk about solving their biggest problems, and the results were overwhelmingly positive," said Battery Ventures Principal Alex Benik. "Thought leaders from both Big IT and Big Web filled the room to share ideas on the way forward, and there was no shortage of opinions, great examples of things gone right, and more than a few thoughts on experiments gone wrong. We look forward to staying in touch with everyone who attended, and will continue to help bridge the divide between the worlds of Big IT and Big Web."

The Day's Speakers
Speakers at BIBW included: Aaron Kimball (WibiData), Adrian Cockcroft (Netflix), Allan Leinwand (Zynga), Digvijay Lamba (Walmart Labs), Dmitiry Ryaboy (Twitter), George Brady (Fidelity Investments), Jason Hoffman (Joyent), Lew Tucker (Cisco) and Todd Papaioannou (Continuuity), among others. Nearly 150 technologists from corporate IT and leading consumer web brands, as well as CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs of infrastructure and big data start ups, attended and shared best practices.

About Battery Ventures
Since 1983, Battery has been investing in technology and innovation worldwide. The firm partners with entrepreneurs and management teams across technology sectors, geographies and stages of a company's life, from seed, start-up and expansion financing, to growth equity and buyouts.

Battery has supported many breakthrough companies around the world, including: Airespace (acquired by Cisco), Akamai Technologies (IPO), Angie's List (IPO), Anobit (acquired by Apple), Bazaarvoice (IPO), Bladelogic (acquired by BMC), ExactTarget (IPO), Groupon (IPO), Guidewire Software (IPO), ITA Software (acquired by Google), MetroPCS (IPO), Netezza (acquired by IBM), Skullcandy (IPO), and XtremIO (acquired by EMC). Its current portfolio includes data and infrastructure companies such as, Calxeda, Continuuity, Cumulus Networks, Duetto Research, Kontagent, Marketo, Opscode, VSS Monitoring, and Zerto.

From offices in Boston, Silicon Valley and Israel, Battery manages nearly $4B in committed capital, including its current fund of $750M. For more information, visit www.battery.com. Follow Battery on Twitter.