Manik Surtani is the founder and project lead of Infinispan, an open source data grid platform. He discussed data grids, NoSQL, and their role in cloud storage. Data grids evolved from distributed caches to provide features like querying, task execution, and co-location control. NoSQL systems are alternative data storage that is scalable and distributed but lacks relational structure. JSR 347 aims to standardize data grid APIs for the Java platform. Infinispan implements JSR 107 and will support JSR 347, acting as the reference backend for Hibernate OGM.