This year, Information Age launched The Data 50 Awards, a new initiative aimed at honouring the top 50 individuals and companies deemed to be at the forefront of data. The judges had the arduous task of whittling down hundreds of entries in order to recognise individuals at the cutting edge of modern data practices; people who are driving the transformation of organisations through the use and application of meaningful data.
We’re delighted to say that our own Manu Marchal, MD of EMEA, has been named as a member of the Data 50 for 2016, having spent the past 15 years of his career working in data. The full list represents the UK’s top 50 data leaders and influencers across the ten fields of database, corporate, public sector and non-profit, media, internet and learning, B2C, open source, intelligence, services and consulting, infrastructure and protection, knowledge and integration.
Marchal has been recognised in-part, for his consistent efforts in driving new business value from leveraging the vast quantities of data generated by the Internet of Things (IoT). The rise of IoT has resulted in an unprecedented quantity and inconsistency of data, and limitless opportunities for organisations to harness this data. This disruption to the IT ecosystem has led to the rapid innovation of technologies such as NoSQL databases, capable of storing and analysing the modern avalanche of data into meaningful, valuable insight.

Since joining Riak Marchal has overseen several significant projects, including bet365, one of the world’s leading online gambling groups, who turned to Riak as a means to crunch the huge amount of data the company processes on a daily basis, from customer details to betting odds. Marchal oversaw the project and its success highlighted Riak’s excellent work with a company whose implementation of this technology was very much ahead of the curve for the gaming industry.
Marchal’s significant contribution to the London data scene has also been recognised, having founded Big Data London in 2011, the first and largest big data focussed community in Europe dedicated to bringing together those with an interest in big data and the people who know how to capitalize on big data. The first Big Data London meetup took place in June 2011, with Marchal inviting the early adopters and innovators, the data scientists and big data engineers to interact with senior decision makers from the mainstream organisations who hoped to capitalise on the forthcoming data revolution. Here, experts were able to share their experiences, challenges and expertise on big data to help others deal with their own specific challenges. It also created a central point for hiring data experts. Now, the community is the largest big data focussed group in Europe with over 4100 members, a LinkedIn group of 1400 members, with over 50 past sponsors including Google, IBM, Skype, KPMG and Barclays.