Pile-On: Dan Woods “Lessons From The First Wave Of Hadoop Adoption”

Dan Woods put out a nice piece yesterday on his Forbes blog titled “Lessons From The First Wave Of Hadoop Adoption“.

I agree with him that the insights and advantages of Big Data solutions need to be described in ways other than technology. I’m going to add on to his insights.

1. It’s about more than big data. It’s a new platform.

Yes, it is a new platform.  That means it’s different than the old ones. The fact that you can do some things cheaper than you could before is not the main idea. A bigger story is that some things that were economically not possible before, now are. But the main idea is that this is a new platform, with new capabilities, that needs to fit into your existing data architecture.

2. Don’t get rid of your data warehouse

I completely agree. Big Data technology is a new tool with new characteristics. Using it to replace a Data Warehouse technology that is finely tuned for that use case is not a great idea. Don’t listen to the “Hadoop will replace every database within x years” crowd. No database has managed to replace every database. No database ever will because the variety of the use cases is too large.

3. Think about your data supply chain

Since a Big Data system needs to fit in with everything you currently have and operate, integration is a significant priority. Understand that with Big Data you can build a Big Silo, but a Big Silo is as bad as a small silo (just a lot bigger). You should not be required to pump all your data from every system into Hadoop to get value from it. Design you data architecture carefully, the implications and fallout of getting it right or wrong are significant.

4. It’s complicated

Yes it is. It’s also not cheap to do it well. Sure you can download a lot of open source software and prototype or prove your ideas without a lot of upfront outlay. But putting it into production is a production. Expect that.