GoGrid Big Data Solutions is the latest offering from cloud infrastructure company GoGrid. While GoGrid has previously focused on cloud hosting and servers, this foray into big data analysis is consistent with the growing trend of moving big data queries into the cloud.

The company opted for hybrid architecture for their new product in order to combine the benefits of single-tenant infrastructure and cloud computing through their own management portal.

The new GoGrid system leverages the benefits of cloud servers and specialized infrastructure to process large data bundles, while also offering scalability in sudden traffic spikes, according to SYS-CON Media.

While the traditional domain of big data is in-house infrastructure, the prohibitive costs of setting up big data infrastructure means cloud-based applications are growing in popularity. Small and midsized businesses are particularly well-placed to take advantage of this trend, as they were typically unable to utilize the analytical benefits of big data information due to the cost of setting up the required infrastructure. Cloud-based applications that allow big data to be processed off-site--and often faster than traditional timescales--gives these companies the ability to reap the benefits of big data analysis at a fraction what it would have previously cost.

GoGrid is not alone in their cloud offerings however, and some of their biggest competition comes from giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Last month, Google unveiled its big data cloud offering, BigQuery, which utilizes Google's extensive infrastructure to offer clients fast, secure, and readily scalable big data analysis. Amazon and Microsoft have chosen to leverage the open source software framework of Hadoop to provide big data analysis through their Elastic MapReduce and Hadoop on Azure platforms, respectively. GoGrid Big Data Solutions also uses Hadoop as the framework for its application, with a preconfigured introduction to Hadoop provided with the big data service.

Bringing big data into the cloud and making it more readily available to smaller businesses greatly levels the playing field as far as competitive marketing analysis goes. However, there remains the issue of having the professional personnel on hand to mine and analyze the vast data sets that are produced in big data applications. Google's BigQuery somewhat remedies this by providing its own analytics software to support big data queries, although you still have to know what queries to run, or questions to ask, to be able to profit from the analysis.

As the size of data sets increases, with more and more information available to mine, there is a growing need for data specialists to help small and midsize businesses harness the competitive edge that cloud-based big data analysis hands them. So while new cloud-based big data companies create a competitive market, there should also be attention paid to sourcing trained personnel to help businesses use the programs more effectively.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.