The 5-Minute Interview: Andy Mulholland, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research

The graph database phenomenon has been around for a while and originated from wanting to use data in a different way, particularly in areas such as Google, social webs, CRM, and marketing. The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to increase the need for graph databases due to the vast amount of data being generated by connected devices. Smart farming is one area where graphs can be applied to analyze relationships between crops, soil, and weather patterns. As IoT continues to grow, we're moving towards analytics of things (AoT), which relies on exploring relationships between everything, leading naturally to graph databases like Neo4j. For large-scale data sharing among multiple entities, open-source databases like Neo4j are becoming increasingly popular, as they offer the right characteristics for collaboration and data analysis.