The designation "Big Data" has become a mainstream buzz phrase across many industries as well as research circles. However, today many vendors are making performance claims that are not easily verifiable in the absence of a neutral industry-wide benchmark. [The situation is not a lot different from what motivated the creation of TPC and SPEC in 1980s. See: Early Attempts at Civilized Competition, and A Measure of Transaction Processing Power by Jim Gray et al]. Big Data was identified as one of the top areas for industry standard benchmark developments at the recent VLDB, TPCTC, WBDB and other conferences. Keeping this in mind and continuing the commitment to developing relevant benchmark standards, the TPC has created a Big Data Working Group (TPC-BDWG) tasked with developing industry standards for benchmarking Big Data systems. Companies, research and government institutions who are interested in influencing the development of such benchmarks are encouraged to join the TPC.

Raghunath Nambiar
(Chairman, TPC-BDWG)