This is where we disagree.

Big Data for me isn’t a new database technology (BTW – NoSQL isn’t a database technology either – it is just a term that describes a wide and varied set of database types) – it is a mindset – it says what you plan to do with the data you are collecting and how you are going to treat it.

It usually revolves around large sets of data, but not always. It usually does include unstructued data, but not always. It is always a compromise in terms of the capabilities you had up until today in the way you handled data – one you are willing to take in order to solve the issues that come from the 3 V’s.

Big Data is usually a new database technology, like NoSQL. It is usually also a distributed database. Which depends on distributed storage to even function. Possibly using Map Reduce.

As someone somewhere else already mentioned:
“The main challenge that these databases solve is how to handle massive amount of data at a reasonable cost and without poor performance”