Survey Results Disagree on the True State of Hadoop Adoption

How much traction are Hadoop and other Big Data tools getting in enterprises? That depends on which studies you put credence in. A new report from Barclays Bank PLC notes that Hadoop is gaining substantial enterprise traction, but other reports note that many enterprises remain in evaluation stage. Meanwhile, a recent report from Snowflake Computing, a cloud data warehousing company, found that nearly two thirds of the respondents said that they believe Hadoop will not have any impact on their legacy data environments.

As CIO Journal reports, citing data from a Barclays Bank PLC survey:

"Hadoop, which processes large amounts of data from websites, email and other sources, is one of the key themes of the “Big Data Playbook,” a 52-page report published Monday by Barclays’ equity research unit...As the Wall Street Journal has noted, Hadoop implementation can be painful. Barclays finds the situation changing, partly thanks to tools like Hive, a 'SQL in Hadoop engine,' which enables programmers to work with data in Hadoop. Hive allows SQL-like queries to be run on Hadoop in a language called Hive Query Language, which compiles into MapReduce and is run just like one would run any other database."

Indeed, OStatic has reported on the many extensions and enhancements for Hadoop that are making its use simpler and more effective.

But Snowflake Computing has announced the results of an independent, national survey of more than 315 technology and analytics professionals with responsibility for corporate data initiatives. The survey turned up some surprises.

Among these, the survey found that Hadoop is not viewed as a practical replacement for the data warehouse. A majority of data professionals (64 percent) would not consider Hadoop as a possible replacement for any portion of their data warehouse. In fact, 91 percent expressed concerns about using Hadoop, with 71 percent citing lack of specialized expertise as a key concern.

On the topic of expertise, MapR's Tomer Shiran recently reiterated in an interview with us that there is a shortage of trained professionals in the Big Data space.  He said:

"There is a shortage of trained big data technology and analytics experts. Labor supply constraint is a key inhibitor of adoption and use of big data technologies. Current training offerings in the marketplace do not meet the cost, convenience and flexibility needs of today’s professionals. In-person training incurs significant costs, travel, and a big contiguous block of committed time. This is why we launched free on-demand Hadoop training last month. MapR wants to enable individuals to get trained on valuable skills and increase big data adoption in the market."