The data thus generated is likely to increase exponentially year after year. But Big Data by itself is powerless unless it is managed efficiently and effectively. This requires a tool in which such a huge data can be mined to extract meaningful inferences out of it. When it comes to mining of data and such sophisticated algorithms for supporting decision making, we tend to ignore the cost of the infrastructure such algorithms demand to have run them .The huge costs of computer infrastructure and the related power management are barriers tall enough to discourage new comers into big data mining and related businesses. Imagine if such large a Big data be easily churned on commodity computer hardware? What if the software framework that manages the backend operations of such an affordable infrastructure comes as an open source (yes? For free!). Hadoop does exactly this. The primary reason for Hadoop's popularity has been the fact that it is open source framework and that it can run hugely data intensive applications on a relatively affordable( if not cheap) infrastructure of distributed computer systems.
Who invented Hadoop?
An inquisitive reader could have asked -Who must have had the need to mastermind such a software framework that supports applications which are both data intensive and distributed? You must have guessed it right- Google it is.In 2005, Doug Cutting and Mike Cafarella created Hadoop basing their idea on a scientific publication about distributed computing by Google. Cutting named this phenomenal open source framework, after his son's toy elephant, as Hadoop .Hadoop is licensed under the Apache v2 license. Google invented this technology, a few years earlier, to index their collection of website information that Google bots collect every day. This technology has helped the search engine giant in serving the search requests with lightening speeds while the meaning fullness of the search results is ensured.
How can Hadoop transform the Businesses in today's digital economies?
Big Data has an effect on every aspect of modern day business and Hadoop will play a crucial role to operate on big data. Marketing, Strategic decision making & Business intelligence, Governance & Business administration are a few areas where Hadoop can make a real big difference in the era of Big Data and digital business. Hadoop is being used successfully to aid businesses to obtain competitive advantage in almost all the areas of business operations including marketing, business intelligence & strategic decision making, financial trading, Business administration. At the time this article being written, Hadoop is already used in industries like transportation, financial services, manufacturing, ecommerce, marketing consultancies & information services ,entertainment ,healthcare ,among others. Though the examples are many, the following are a few broad areas that Hadoop has really transformed the business priorities.
Targeting Customers & Direct Marketing
Hadoop is used to carefully maneuver the social media data, be it the twitter handles or the information generated by Facebook user base, to better understand the customer's preferences, choices and predict their general behavior based on their web behavior. Though it is difficult to believe, at least in the first go, that human behavior or purchase probability can be predicted using Big Data analytics, it is true. An estimated potential of Hadoop market for the same would hit 14 billion USD by 2017 .