John Schroeder, executive chairman and founder of MapR Technologies has identified blockchain as a new big data technology among six big data predictions for 2017.

According to his predictions, blockchain transforms select financial service applications that emerge with broad implications for the way data is stored and transactions processed. Blockchain technology in 2017, will offer a global distributed ledger that changes the way data is stored and transactions are processed.

The blockchain runs on computers distributed worldwide and the chains can be viewed by anyone. Hackers find it impossible to hack the blockchain since the world has a view of the entire blockchain.

“Blockchain provides obvious efficiency for consumers. For example, customers won't have to wait for that SWIFT transaction or worry about the impact of a central data center leak. For enterprises, blockchain presents cost savings and opportunity for competitive advantage,” the prediction stated.

In addition to the blockchain technology, Schroeder has crystallized his view of market trends into technologies including AI, big data for governance or competitive advantage, machine learning that maximizes micro services impact, data agility that separates winners and losers, and companies focus on business that drives applications to avoid data lakes from becoming swamps.

“Our predictions are strongly influenced by leading customers who have gained significant business value by integrating analytics into operational use cases,” Schroeder mentioned. “Our customer use of the MapR converged data platform provides agility to DevOps where they can use a broad range of processing models from Hadoop to Spark, SQL, NoSQL, files, and message streaming--whatever is required for their current and future use cases in private, public and hybrid cloud deployments."