How you can use Hadoop to be as agile and innovative as a start-up!

Originally published on SAS Voices.

InnovationWeighed down by what has gone before, and what is needed to keep the lights on, the CIOs at many organizations I have worked with have turned to Hadoop with the hope of utilizing it as a major component of an IT infrastructure and as part of their modernization and migration program for analytics and BI.

In my previous posts, I explored the world of traditional IT as it relates to Hadoop for those CIOs. We have looked at how Hadoop can be deployed without throwing away your warehouse and put forward some approaches people are taking around the data lake concept. All of these are generally focused on finding economically more viable approaches to what we expect to come in the future. If you like, these organizations are focused on improving what they do today while driving down costs.

In parallel to this, two questions have come up time and time again as I have worked with established organizations, of all sizes, over the past 6-12 months. Those questions are:

  • How can we, with all their legacy technology constraints, hard to change processes and need to focus on cost control, possibly enable all our business units to compete with nimble competitors that are starting to cast a shadow over many parts of our business?”
  • “How can we challenge the age old perceptions and approaches of IT, in order to support the business in getting answers to their questions?

Continue reading How you can use Hadoop to be as agile and innovative as a start-up!

Swimming in a lake of confusion: Does the Hadoop data lake make sense?

Originally published on SAS Voices

Pig SwimmingAll hail the data lake, destroyer of  enterprise data warehouses and the solution to all our enterprise data access problems! Ok – well, maybe not. In part four of this series I want to talk about the confusion in the market I am seeing around the data lake phrase, including a look at how the term seems to be evolving within organizations based on my recent interactions.

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3 ways to use Hadoop without throwing out the DWH

Originally posted on SAS Voices

Work TogetherWorking out where Hadoop might fit alongside, or where it might replace components, of existing IT architectures is a question on the minds of every organization that is being drawn towards the promises of Hadoop. That is the main focus of this blog along with discussions of some of the reasons they are drawn towards Hadoop.

For the past 12 months, I have spent a great deal of time speaking to organizations that were either thinking about adopting Hadoop as a data platform or were already well underway with their Hadoop journey. During this time, I have heard two core arguments as to why people want to adopt Hadoop: cost and agility. Perhaps unsurprisingly if you talk to those that have implemented, they often tout the same two things as the benefits of having adopted Hadoop. Lets dig into both.

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The factors that drove the growth of Hadoop

Originally published on SAS Voices

elephant-684600_1280In the first instalment of this series on Hadoop, I shared a little of Hadoop’s genesis, framing it within four phases of connectivity that we are moving through. I also stated my belief that Hadoop has already arrived in the mainstream, and we are currently moving from phases three of connecting people to phase four of connecting devices and things.

In this post I want to cover my views on the developments that have allowed Hadoop to break free from the Silicon Valley bubble and appeal to organizations of all sizes.

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