CIOs Are Starting to Cozy Up to Hadoop

Of the big names in Big Data, Apache Hadoop, an open-source framework for processing massive data sets, is definitely among the biggest and most popular.

And a new report from Deutsche Bank backs up the framework’s growing popularity with CIOs, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal:

“Deutsche Bank said 12 of the 26 CIOs it interviewed suggested Hadoop would figure into their analytics plans, either in proof-of-concept or production implementation.

“The CIO of a global telco provider said he was developing a new business intelligence system that would leverage Hadoop ‘as much as possible.’ A CIO at a major retailer said he is testing Hadoop for analyzing data on its supply chain and security systems.”

One of the reasons that Big Data software and frameworks like Hadoop haven’t been widely adopted by companies in the past is the lack of IT professionals with the skills to handle such software. But that skills shortage is likely to resolve itself as more programmers pick up the coding skills along the way.

Free online courses and tutorials on how to code for Hadoop could certainly help speed up adoption. That’s why Hadoop distributor MapR Technologies is now offering such resources, reports CIO.

But beyond seeking Hadoop-skilled IT workers, companies must also invest in the necessary IT infrastructure to support Hadoop environments. Dan Woods, a former chief technology officer and IT consultant, outlined three key things every company looking to leverage Hadoop must do in a column he wrote for Forbes.

• Create a cluster of computers, either on premise or in the cloud.
• Install and configure Hadoop and many other software components on that cluster. (These two steps have been the focus of most efforts at making Hadoop easy so far.)
• Run many different types of workloads on your cluster and manage the cluster so that everything goes smoothly. This challenge stalls many Big Data efforts.

With roughly 1,000 companies using Hadoop according to estimates from Gartner, there’s plenty of room for growth and adoption. So keep an eye out for the little yellow elephant who might be making his way soon to a server room near you.