Kenneth Cukier looks at what’s next for machine learning — and human knowledge.

Self-driving cars were just the start. What’s the future of big data-driven technology and design?

Read more on: <a title=”IBM Smart Camp Streetlight” href=”http://ibmsmartcamp.com/2012/09/20/smartcamp-winner-spotlight-streetlight-data/”>IBM Smart Camp</a>

Yesterday in Munich IBM held its first SmartCamp event in Germany. It was also the first SmartCamp with a specific focus on Big Data and Business Analytics.

Keynote Speaker Philippe Souidi, Founder of echofy.me, summarized this topic perfectly when he called Big Data the “Oil of the next Century”… fitting, isn’t it?

The Gate Garching, the host of the event and a Munich Technology and Entrepreneur Center, was the perfect location for mindshare around the next generation of cutting edge startups, fitting because it is the home to several in-house innovative, young companies and close to the campus of the Technical University of Munich.

Let’s learn a little more about the startups who participated. 3 Big Data and Analytics startups received intensive mentoring from 15 Mentors representing different backgrounds, different industries, and different perspectives. Mentors included VCs, angels, serial entrepreneurs and industry experts, all of which had a common interest in Smarter Analytics.

SmartCamp Participants:

Celonis Softwate Solutions is the leading vendor for the analysis of operative process data created by IT systems. Their unique analysis technology, Process Business Intelligence, enables customers to intuitively dive into their process data and use it to improve their operational performance.

HoneyTracks provides the deepest analytics solution for monetization of online games and help Game Companies to understand the success factors of their game and how it generates revenues based on big data.

JouleX Energy Manager Solutions reduces energy costs up to 60% by monitoring, analyzing and managing energy usage of all network-connected devices and systems, without the use of costly and unwieldy agents.

And the winner is… JouleX!

As expected we had some very strong teams however the judges selected Joulex as the winner. Joulex leverages big data in order to create business intelligence by aggregating and correlating the energy information from all IP-enabled devices to provide unprecedented visibility into the energy consumption and utilization of those devices throughout the distributed office, data center and facilities environments. JouleX takes this a step further by applying advanced analytics to identify energy, cost, and carbon savings opportunities and a management platform to implement policies to realize this savings.

They have offices in Germany, US and Japan and are headed by Tom Noonan – Tom was previously CEO of Internet Security Systems (ISS), which was acquired by IBM for $1.5 billion. We look forward to working with them in the coming months.

Congratulations again to Joulex, Celonis and Honeytracks, an impressive set of Analytics and Big Data startups to kick off the very first SmartCamp in Germany!

Also a very big thanks to all our partners who were key to a very successful event.

Read more on: IBM Smart Camp