Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business

Chapter 11

Big Data Architectural Ramifications

This is the part of the book that most everyone has been waiting for—the technology discussion. As you can probably guess, there is a reason the technology discussion is near the end of the book: a technology discussion can only be productive if it has the benefit of a prior understanding of the business drivers and the targeted business solution around which to scope the technology discussion. Too many times in this industry the first discussion is about the technology features. The reason why organizations want to talk about the technology is because it's easy to talk about its general features and capabilities (the “feeds and speeds”) as compared to taking the time to understand what business challenges or opportunities an organization is trying to address with the technology. As is typical in this industry, we're always in search of the “silver bullet.”

So this chapter briefly introduces some of the new big data technologies, and provides links and suggested readings in case you want to dive deep into the technologies—there are plenty of outstanding and freely available resources that talk about the new big data technologies. The remainder of the chapter then focuses on exploring the architectural ramifications of big data, especially for organizations that have already made significant investments in their data warehousing and business intelligence (BI) capabilities. As discussed in Stage 1 of the Big Data Business Maturity Index, ...