I'm trying to keep myself motivated while writing my advacement proposal for graduate school. It isn't exactly easy, but hey, I got around to writing the introduction last night, and I think the first paragraph turned out well.

The world has been operating in an era of data science for some time now, with buzz words like big data and software-defined storage being the hottest things since sliced bread. Indeed, these terms do describe buzz-worthy topics: data-driven science and business analytics are fueling new data economies, where access to vast amounts of raw information is enabling scientific discovery across a multitude of disciplines, and freshly minted MBAs hire teams of statisticians to optimize business things™. But behind the scenes is an alternate world where distributed systems crunch numbers and store the new data currency in Fort Knox 2.0. And like Fort Knox, those guarding the castle are the ones you want on your side when you rob the place blind. If one looks at the boundary between the new world of data analytics platforms, and the storage systems that safe guard and serve up data, one will find old school interfaces that are struggling to meet the needs of users. This shouldn't be surprising: it takes a long time to build something like Fort Knox, and so while greybeard storage systems are getting hip replacements to keep up, next-generation storage systems with Ivy League potential are unfortunately growing up to be regular chips off the old block.