Big data” is clearly the buzzword of the year and will soon knock “cloud computing” from its leading position, at least accord ing to Google Trends. Big data has appeared in the news, the US government recently announced a Big Data Research and Develop ment initiative (see http://tinyurl.com/85oytkj), and hundreds of startups are working on big data solutions while established providers try to catch up with the new trend. The Econo- mist even called out that we live in the age of big data