One of the terms that gets thrown around these days is "big data." This shouldn't be surprising, considering that clear back in 2009 alone, 90 trillion e-mails were sent, and over 4 billion images were hosted on Flickr. A couple of years ago, Eric Schmidt said that every two days, the world generates as much information as it did from the dawn of civilization up until  2003. These numbers will only get bigger. As if that wasn't enough to blow your mind, consider this: How hard would it be for you to sift through that amount of data and find anything of real value to a business? Finding the answer to this question is the business of big data.

Future careers will be based on more than the ability to program or administer a database. For the future, you'll need to know not only how to store massive amounts of data, but also how to grind through this data and come up with valuable business information. Big data will enable business to do two major things, according to Edd Dumbill a  writer at O'Reilly Media:

  1. Allow companies to analyze data derived from various sources, including internal company documents and social networking chatter.
  2. Enable companies to create new products.

What kind of jobs are there in big data? In the last seven days, the following jobs have been listed at various sites, including glassdoor, a really cool job search site:

If you check out Indeed.com, you'll see that they list a large array of jobs related to big data.

If you click through the links, notice that Hadoop is a major part of big data. Common skills are also the ability to understand cloud-based solutions, manage people, provide business guidance, an understanding of object-oriented, Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) and traditional SQL/relational databases, and the ability to understand the business implications of data that has been gathered.

But, you say to yourself, my A+ or Network+ certification doesn't prepare me for this. Doesn't matter. Why? Because those certifications have gotten you on your way. Now it's time to grow your career. Set your sights on these job roles and job skills. Learn about these topics, either in school or in an entry-level job and work up. These jobs will only become more numerous, more specialized, and more in-demand.

Note: The above links may no longer be valid. This article was written in February 2012. Still, search sites such as Dice.com and glassdoor for these job roles. Even over time, these job roles will still be valid.