Bill Loconzolo, vice president of data engineering at Intuit, jumped into a data lake with both feet. Dean Abbott, chief data scientist at Smarter Remarketer, made a beeline for the cloud. The leading edge of big data and analytics, which includes data lakes for holding vast stores of data in its native format and, of course, cloud computing, is a moving target, both say. And while the technology options are far from mature, waiting simply isn’t an option.

“The reality is that the tools are still emerging, and the promise of the [Hadoop] platform is not at the level it needs to be for business to rely on it,” says Loconzolo. But the disciplines of big data and analytics are evolving so quickly that businesses need to wade in or risk being left behind. “In the past, emerging technologies might have taken years to mature,” he says. “Now people iterate and drive solutions in a matter of months — or weeks.” So what are the top emerging technologies and trends that should be on your watch list — or in your test lab? Computerworld asked IT leaders, consultants and industry analysts to weigh in. Here’s their list.

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