Ballmer To IBM, Oracle: You Don't Know Big Data -- InformationWeek

Some Bing/big data stats; check the article link below for more details and context-setting

So just where was Ballmer coming from when he said, "Nobody plays in big data, really, except Microsoft and Google"?

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Microsoft's online operation puts big data into perspective. Bing's infrastructure is comprised of 250,000 Windows Server machines and manages some 150 petabytes of data. Microsoft processes two to three petabytes per day. "You really have to figure out how to process that kind of data to keep your index fresh," Nardella says.

Those interested in running apps in the cloud might dismiss Bing-related processing as being stateless -- not a continuously running component of a mission-critical app. Nadella points to Microsoft's AdCenter, which is a complicated business application with a transactional data store. All Internet ad deliveries have to be tracked, and for every search, Microsoft runs some 30,000 auctions simultaneously to re-rank the ads. "That's as stateful an app as you can get," Nadella says.

Ballmer To IBM, Oracle: You Don't Know Big Data -- InformationWeek