Deep into big data

"They need to own that platform both from an availability perspective, from management and monitoring perspective and integration perspective.""Working with the business is a throwaway statement," says Foster. "Everybody is saying IT and the business need to work together, but analytics is a core reminder of that." Sidebar: When your job title is also a buzzwordThe data scientist as a job is becoming one of the buzzwords in IT today. Fortune magazine calls the data scientist as the "hot tech gig". It is also one of the most important roles in companies as they grapple with the reality of dealing through massive data generated internally and externally."It is fundamentally an interdisciplinary field," says Kee Siong Ng, principal data scientist at EMC Greenplum. Apart from dealing with data computations, you have to know statistics, computer science, understand big data and more importantly, he says, have the knowledge and "active interest" in how businesses and IT departments work.But he says one of the most important traits for the job is "curiousity...in everything.""There will always be technology changes over the years. [And] If you are not naturally curious, you learn that things become relevant for three to four years, and then you become comfortable.""You have to stay curious and keep finding things on your own," says Kee Siong, who moved to EMC over a year ago from the Australian National University, where he continues to be an adjunct lecturer. "That is, perhaps, the only skill you need because everything else you can learn."