When you list out the var­i­ous mar­ket seg­ments where Big Data plays a role one mar­ket that stands out is right under our col­lec­tive noses — it’s log data  (and other forms of net­work, secu­rity alerts, server, enter­prise app, stor­age sys­tems activ­i­ties) from the very devices that make up the infra­structure. Most peo­ple have seen Big Data appli­cations through the eyes of the high vol­ume web­sites of the world — Face­book, LinkedIn, Yahoo!, Google… and the dream of these Web fac­ing appli­cations is to improve ad tar­get­ing, keep vis­i­tors on the site longer, pro­vide richer expe­ri­ences… the stuff that makes seri­ous money for the big Web prop­er­ties. Mean­while, oth­ers have been qui­etly suck­ing up infra­structure gen­er­ated data sets with the inten­tion of improv­ing the opera­tional and cost aspects of their infra­structure. Splunk, the clear leader so far, filed their S1 (manda­tory read­ing by the way) and is head­ing for a $1B val­u­a­tion through an IPO which might hap­pen any day now. Oth­ers in the space include Guavus, focused on com­plex ser­vice providers and Bound­ary focused on Big Data infra­structure. Accord­ing to its S1 fil­ing, Splunk has signed up over 3,000 cus­tomers in just a few years — tap­ping what is pos­si­bly the rich­est vein of the Big Data trea­sure hunt — opti­miz­ing infra­structure funda­mentals. Splunk is prob­a­bly the best evi­dence that there is a “there, there” with regard to invest­ing in Big Data startups.