Big Data Choices at Government Agencies
December 3, 2013
The explosion of big data continues to put pressure on IT departments. GCN examines how government agencies are approaching the challenge in, “As Big Data Grows, Technologies Evolve Into Ecosystems.” Writer Rutrell Yasin frames the issue of deploying big-data platforms and analytics:
“But what is the best way to accomplish this: By cobbling together various ‘point products’ that address all of the big data processes, or by building a ‘big data platform’ that integrates all of the capabilities organizations need to apply deep analytics?”
The article goes on to examine the most prominent solutions competing for institutional big-data dollars. Not surprisingly, IBM‘s Eric Sall advocates a comprehensive platform, like his company’s InfoSphere. It looks like many organizations, though, are responding to the lure of open source. Though it is often the cheaper approach, the disparate nature of open-source solutions can pose its own problems. The article looks at efforts from outfits like Red Hat and Cisco that aim to consolidate apps and systems from different sources (both open source and paid). It is worth a look if your organization is at or approaching the big-data-solution crossroads.
The article concludes:
“The bottom line is that organizations need these massively parallel processing systems and other big data tools that can scale out to address the volume, velocity and variety of big data, whether they come from a proprietary vendor’s platform or a platform based on open technologies. It makes life simpler for organizations if their workforce can unlock the value of their data via an ecosystem of integrated tools, industry experts said.”
Indeed, simpler is usually better. Even if saving money is your main goal, do not dismiss paid solutions that help manage open source resources; the savings in time and frustration often more than make up for the added cost.
Cynthia Murrell, December 03, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
