OBSTACLE TO OPPORTUNITY: BIG DATA

COMES ALIVE IN HADOOP

October 2016

Who's afraid of the big bad data? Well… a lot of people actually. Who could blame them? Seemingly uncontrollable
streams of data from the Internet of Things, unstructured social media data, and other growing piles of data all amount to a
serious challenge. Those exploiting the flexibility and scalability of Hadoop, however, are able to navigate these challenges.

 Michael Lock, Vice President & Principal Analyst,

Analytics & Business Intelligence

Flexibility. Scalability. Speed. Control. These are words

most pundits would use to describe the effective use of
Hadoop and its associated technologies and
frameworks.

Purpose-built to help companies manage the explosion in data

volume and complexity, Hadoop-based data architectures (data
lakes) offer enticing benefits. Companies can manage multiple
disparate data types in their native formats all under one roof.

70 %
The technology architecture allows for deployment on lower
cost commodity hardware enabling high availability and
scalability as the data infrastructure grows. For IT architects,
data scientists, business analysts, and those who work with data
as a core set of activities in their daily job, these benefits are
highly attractive. However, many companies struggle to break
of Best-in-Class through some of the significant barriers to Hadoop, such as:
companies are using a
 IT resource constraints. Far and away the biggest
Hadoop-based data
challenge for companies considering a Hadoop
lake environment.
implementation, although it's just as much if not more an
issue of skill sets as it is about raw manpower. Open-
 source technology is accessible free of charge but its
integration into the existing data infrastructure is not
for the technically faint-of-heart. Many companies
seek 3rd party services to help implement Hadoop
and manage the frequent upgrades and changes to
the architecture.
 Proof of ROI. Even the most pragmatic CFOs would have
 Read the full report,
a hard time viewing a Hadoop-based data lake as
anything but a cost center. The case for Hadoop “Built on Big Data:
implementation is about reducing wasted time, effort, The Modern, Agile,
and resources in an outdated and archaic IT
Intelligent Enterprise”
infrastructure but it's also about the opportunity cost of
failing to exploit growing volumes of data for game-  Related Research
changing insight.
"The Hybrid Data
 Legacy integration. The current business landscape Warehouse: Fluid,
certainly includes newer, modern, "born in the cloud"
organizations that can exploit the cutting edge of data
Flexible, and
technology without the albatross of legacy technology Formidable"
infrastructure. Most companies, though, have to make
decisions about how to handle existing investments in
traditional enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and RDBMS
technologies while exploring Hadoop.

According to Aberdeen's research, these are the most commonly

cited challenges with a Hadoop-based infrastructure (Figure 1).

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 Figure 1: Top Challenges/Roadblocks Implementing Hadoop

Using or Plan to Implement Hadoop

Lack of IT resources / skills to
60%
manage Hadoop environment
Difficulty proving return on
30%
investment (ROI) from Hadoop
Struggle to link disparate / legacy
29%
data sources to Hadoop
Problems keeping up with evolving
26%
Hadoop ecosystem

0% 20% 40% 60%

% of Respondents
n = 42, Source: Aberdeen Group, May 2016

However, those that have taken the plunge into utilizing Hadoop
as the central architecture of their data lake are boasting a
variety of performance enhancements, including:

 Data fluidity. Hadoop allows for the commingling of

Companies using multiple disparate types of data in their native formats.
Hadoop are able to This offers an inviting centralized location for multiple
users to access a variety of data. In order to make these
access a much broader
benefits a reality, Hadoop users have put a variety of other
array of data, report processes and tools in place (such as data governance and
greater user data preparation) to create a smoother flow of
satisfaction levels information from raw data to the point of analysis. These
with data quality and companies spend less time searching for and prepping
relevance, and have data, and more time analyzing and interpreting
information.
key information
delivered on-time.  Decision efficiency. Any business decision that relies on
a foundation of data has several factors that play into its
efficiency. The breadth of information available, the
cleanliness of the data, the job role relevance, and the
timeliness of the information are all critical factors that
determine the impact of a decision. Companies using
Hadoop are able to access a much broader array of data,

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 report greater user satisfaction levels with data quality
and relevance, and have key information delivered on
time more often than their peers.

 Business execution. As more companies recognize the

importance of analytics as an essential element of their
core operations rather than just a nice-to-have add on,
many are ramping up their efforts in the back-end data
environment to support better front-end analytical
activity and business execution. Those utilizing a
Hadoop-based data lake saw an accelerated time-to-
market, greater profitability, and higher overall revenue
growth.

Conclusion

The alluring performance benefits of Hadoop are attainable, but

don't come without a well-considered strategy and judicious use
of technology. Best-in-Class companies start by taking stock of
their data environment. Which data sources are absolutely
critical to support analyses and which are secondary? Can
Hadoop coexist with existing EDW and relational database tools
or is a rip and replace approach necessary? What steps can we
take to secure our most critical data while at the same time
improving its accessibility?

These are all important questions to ask, but regardless of the

answers, companies need to take action in their data
environments or risk drowning in data with little to no
discernable business value to be extracted. Best-in-Class
companies lean most heavily on their organization maturity and
the capabilities they put in place before implementing
technologies. This efficient combination of people, processes,
and technology empowers these top companies to create a
superior big data environment that offers opportunities rather
than obstacles to insight.

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About Aberdeen Group

Since 1988, Aberdeen Group has published research that helps businesses worldwide improve their performance. Our
analysts derive fact-based, vendor-agnostic insights from a proprietary analytical framework, which identifies Best-in-Class
organizations from primary research conducted with industry practitioners. The resulting research content is used by
hundreds of thousands of business professionals to drive smarter decision-making and improve business strategy.
Aberdeen Group is headquartered in Boston, MA.

This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group and represents the best analysis available at
the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group
and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written
consent by Aberdeen Group.

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