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Build a Strategy for Big Data Platforms

Big Data; let's talk about the elephant in the room.

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Your Challenge

  • The immaturity of the big data market means that organizations lack examples and best practices to follow, and they are often left trailblazing their own paths.
  • Experienced and knowledgeable big data professionals are limited and without creative resourcing; IT might struggle to fill big data positions.
  • The term NoSQL has become a catch-all phrase for big data technologies; however, the technologies falling under the umbrella of NoSQL are disparate and often misunderstood. Organizations are at risk of adopting incorrect technologies if they don’t take the time to learn the jargon.

Our Advice

Critical Insight
  • NoSQL plays a key role in the emergence of the big data market, but it has not made relational databases outdated. Successful big data strategies can be conducted using SQL, NoSQL, or a combination of the two.
  • Assign a Data Architect to oversee your initiative. Hire or dedicate someone who has the ability to develop both a short-term and long-term vision and that has hands-on experience with data management, mining and modeling. You will still need someone (like a database administrator) who understands the database, the schemas, and the structure.
  • Understand your data before you attempt to use it. Take a master data management approach to ensure there are rules and standards for managing your enterprise’s data, and take extra caution when integrating external sources.
Impact and Result
  • Assess whether SQL, NoSQL, or a combination of both technologies will provide you with the appropriate capabilities to achieve your business objectives and gain value from your data.
  • Form a Big Data Team to bring together IT and the business in order to leave a successful initiative.
  • Conduct ongoing training with your personnel to ensure up-to-date skills and end-user understanding.
  • Frequently scan the big data market space to identify new technologies and opportunities to help optimize your big data strategy.

Get to Action

  1. Develop a big data strategy

    Know where to start and where to focus attention in the implementation of a big data strategy.

  2. Assess the appropriateness of big data technologies

    Decide the most correct tools to use in order to solve enterprise data management problems.

  3. Determine the TCO of a scale out implementation

    Compare the TCO of a SQL (scale up) with a NoSQL (scale out) deployment to determine whether NoSQL will save costs.

Tags

BI, business intelligence, database, data, analytics, Data management, SQL, apache, data model, ACID, BASE, database management, unstructured data, big data, nosql, hadoop, cassandra, cloudera, hbase, not only sql

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Big Data; let's talk about the elephant in the room.

Solution Road Map

Other Solution Sets in Enterprise Databases

  1. Upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
    SQL 2008 R2 is largely unchanged from SQL 2008 but has a major upside for those looking to secure Business Intelligence.
  2. Assess Oracle's Role in the Enterprise Database Strategy
    Oracle Database is expensive. Get rid of it if you can, or make the most of it if you can't.
  3. Consolidate Databases using Microsoft SQL Server
    From many to few; learn how to use SQL Server to reduce your database footprint.
  4. Build a Strategy for Big Data Platforms
    Big Data; let's talk about the elephant in the room.
  5. Structure the Role of the DBA
    DBAs work for the data, not the organization-- implement processes to help create a mature DBA structure.
  6. Use DBaaS to Drag, Drop, and Deploy Enterprise Databases
    Take advantage of cloud technologies to extend your in-house database capabilities.
View the full Solution Road Map