Measuring the ROI in Hadoop adoption
Overview:
Nowadays, people seem to be really misinformed about Hadoop, mainly due to lots of half-truths that are fluttering about it in the market. However, all these half-truths were normal as Hadoop is said to be one of the best tool for big data processing and management due to its high effectiveness and capabilities. Knowledge is power, and so the time has come to debunk these myths and analyse the real facts behind them. It’s time for all those businesses to look at the truth, which is the ROI (Return on Investment).
Gartner had once conducted a survey on Hadoop and that gave way to many surprising results. It has shown that many companies aren’t and wouldn’t use Hadoop, as they think it is really hard to use, or they do not have enough operators who can work with Hadoop. There are many reasons other than that too. However, not everyone hates it. Many people are very hopeful about Hadoop’s future prospects. Choosing Hadoop or not can be confusing, as many people don’t really know the truth about Hadoop, so they are unable to distinguish the facts from half-truths. So, the businesses and companies should know more on Hadoop and then start to use it.
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Facts and figures that reveal the contrasting nature of Hadoop
From the earlier section, it is clear that there are two types of companies in the case of Hadoop’s usage. The first types are the reluctant ones, who are not sure about the use of Hadoop due to various reasons. The second ones comprise of those companies and businesses which are really confident about using Hadoop as they believe that it will give them the maximum ROI. To give you more figures to analyze better, a shortened version of the findings of the Gartner survey are given below. The findings were released recently on May 2015, so they are pretty much updated. The large target audience of the survey mainly consisted of small to medium sized companies and small level-C executives
- About 54% of the target audience refused to invest on Hadoop in the future.
- Only 18% of the target audience stated that they may use Hadoop in the future.
- About 26% of the target audience has been currently using or have just started to use Hadoop.
- Those companies, that weren’t using it then and weren’t planning to use it, even in the future, pointed out its hard-to-understand user interface and lack of skills in personnel to operate, as the main cause.
Merv Adrian, who is the vice-president at Gartner, has stated that seemingly, Hadoop would not be very successful for at least the next two years, as there are a large number of corporations in the world who aren’t using Hadoop at the present, and wouldn’t use it for quite some time in the future as well. Also, lack of interest in Hadoop, despite the increasing need of big data management software, suggests that the demand for Hadoop has been sluggish. The reasons for this are given below
- Less or no skills to operate Hadoop are one of the major reasons. Most of the corporations state that their staff does not possess enough skills to use Hadoop. Hadoop can be said to be used by very few corporations who can manage to use it efficiently. However, some extra third party tools are emerging in the market to simplify the process. But even these cannot make the process simple enough.
- Hadoop requires new skills to use, and training employees require both time and money. Also, pre existing skills or simple logic cannot be used to operate this complex software. Training can be provided, but it is expected that such programs will gain more importance only in 2 to 3 years.
- Many companies think that Hadoop won’t be of much use. They seem to think about Hadoop as a bigger problem than it is as a solution. They think that it is overtly powerful, but they aren’t going to need so much power. Also, the overall capital needed to adopt Hadoop is way much higher than the actual profit earned by it.
The second group of companies are confident about its use in the future. Some companies have even started using Hadoop for maximum efficiency with increasing benefits. The most powerful and influential feature of Hadoop is that it can process large amounts of data at real time with high accuracy, so it can drastically reduce the chances of deceit. Also, these companies can work more efficiently as they can carefully analyze customer feedback. They could receive this type of data from a large number of internet based sources.
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What can you make from these findings?
The thinking of the two different groups can be as different as left is to right, and this can make the situation confusing. But this confusion is generally good for companies, as they will now begin to analyze the pros and the cons of Hadoop. When these companies are misinformed, they think only about the bright side of using Hadoop, but after analyzing properly, they can find some of its cons too. So, proper analyzing is required to find out about a product’s usability and also its needfulness.
Hadoop is considered to be an extremely advanced tool, and people think that advanced means hard to use. So, Hadoop users need to debunk this myth too. To use Hadoop, one has to learn it properly which requires large investments in the field. Even the third-party tools that are available cannot make Hadoop easy enough to operate. So, Hadoop has to be modified so that it becomes more user-friendly as a front-end tool.
The main thing that companies should know is the potential of Hadoop at big data processing at real time. The companies which realize this fact earn large profits, preventing frauds at the same time. Processing at real time is more useful than processing all at once as this can also allow you to provide customers with better products according to their feedback. Also, Hadoop is more suitable for processing important data at real time rather than processing unvarying data types in batches. A graph provided below demonstrates the fact.
New technologies take time to get popular with the people. Rumors and truths are completely different, and maybe after sometime, the people who didn’t want to use Hadoop in the first place, may be the very ones to do so after its increase in popularity and after knowing about its true features. This can happen after more tools enter the market, which claim and also simplify the process, and make Hadoop really easy to use. The SQL tool for Hadoop can be a good example of such a tool, and it may make Hadoop more and more easy to use for the general public.
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Conclusion
The lack of interest towards Hadoop does not mean that it is not useful. It means that many companies still don’t know much about it. As such, these companies have to use Hadoop in a manner that meets their need for efficiently solving problems. It can be used for data processing at real time, especially conventional data. There are many other features and uses of Hadoop too, but they are yet to be discovered. However, it needs to be tailored and its user interface is desperately in need of a change. It needs to be made simpler so that anyone can use it. So, at this rate of adoption for Hadoop, it is fair to say that it will be suitable only after a few years, say roughly 2 to 3 years.
