Is Hadoop like Teenage Sex?

I met with a friend of mine the other day who, when it comes technology subjects, I like to say – “she knows enough to be dangerous.” During our lunch she asked me about Hadoop and if I could explain it to her because in her mind it was like teenage sex – “everyone is talking about it but very few people are actually doing it.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the analogy and on one level I think she is right.  I participate in a lot of meetups around Dallas/Fort Worth and many of these meetups have some type of “Big Data” and/or Hadoop as their theme or as a topic of discussion.  What I find astonishing is that for all the hype around Hadoop (it must be the cute little elephant), when you ask people in the audience how many of their firms have actually implemented it, maybe 10-15% of the hands go up.  I’m sure that percentage will go up in 2015 as more and more companies put their toe in the Hadoop pool.

The Pain of Unmet Expectations

Now Hadoop can be a great way to off load some of your storage costs. Archiving some of your legacy data from other more expensive storage and on to a Hadoop cluster is saving organizations thousands of dollars each year. However, like teenage sex, many of these organizations are realizing that their expectations were a little unrealistic. Just like when teens imagine that sex will be like it is in the movies—all fireworks and romance—with Hadoop, once the data is loaded, you imagine that you’ll look deep into each other’s eyes affectionately as you analyze the data together. But, it’s not like that. And in the end, you’re left confused, saddened and feeling jilted when Hadoop doesn’t want to “cuddle with you” and instead makes it difficult for you to do anything with the data you’ve loaded.

And like many bad relationships, you are in it hoping for change — but Hadoop will never give you more. Without MarkLogic that is. Because as it turns out, Hadoop is looking for a suitor— it’s just not you. It needs MarkLogic.

Compatibility is Everything

Just like all the great couples: Taylor & Burton; Jolie & Pitt, peanut butter & chocolate; it’s Hadoop & MarkLogic. MarkLogic completes Hadoop. It enhances your Hadoop environment by giving you ACID compliance, an Inverted Index for Search, Semantics, Alerting and a whole slew of other features all on top of your Hadoop data.  That’s why Hadoop and MarkLogic are the perfect union.  Additionally, MarkLogic has a bi-directional connector to Hadoop that gives you the ability to consolidate information from your Hadoop cluster with other data stored in your legacy systems. Or, you can push data out of MarkLogic into Hadoop to kick off map reduce processes. Some would say that MarkLogic gives you the ability to “real time” your Hadoop environment. To learn more about how MarkLogic complements Hadoop, click here.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating teenage sex (I have 4 children from the ages of 20 to 12), abstinence is definitely preached in our house.  But just like teenage sex, though everyone is talking about Hadoop, only a few are actually trying it. And those who have tried it are finding that it’s not living up to the hype.