Hadoop
If you think Hadoop sounds like it might be a kid's toy, you're on the right track.
In 2005, independent coder Doug Cutting and computer scientist Mike Cafarella laid the groundwork for this open-source software platform. Cutting named it after his son's stuffed elephant.
Hadoop is one of those technologies that can be very difficult to explain to mainstream tech industry investors. Luckily, we don't have to understand how Hadoop works – only what it does.
Essentially, Hadoop allows its users – mostly corporations and other large enterprises – to store much, much larger and many, many more data files on a server or network than was previously possible. Hadoop basically erases previous data-storage restraints.
And that makes this open-source technology a Big Data "enabler."
Of course, that requires me to define another term. Big Data refers to the vast amounts of raw, unstructured data too complex to be organized or analyzed by traditional computer applications.
Big Data's uses are nearly endless. Companies who've managed to wrangle it have used it to create super-effective recommendation engines… calculate charging thresholds… track and find treatments for disease outbreaks…
Because of its ability to crunch and store huge amounts of data, since its official launch in 2011, Hadoop has become the platform with which businesses manage and store their data.
As such, it underpins the massive operations of such web leaders as Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB), Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR), and eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY).
Hadoop may be open source, meaning it's free for anyone to use, but there is still lots of money to be made from it. It's not simple to use "out of the box," so Big Data users need someone to package, manage, and monitor their Hadoop functions.
No wonder it's such a fast-growing sector. MarketsandMarkets estimates Hadoop-related sales came in at just $1.5 billion back in 2012. But by 2017, that figure is expected to rise to $13.9 billion, for a compound annual growth rate of 54.9%.
That puts it at the leading edge of the much larger Big Data market. Big Data is itself being driven by the dizzying speeds at which the digital universe is growing. Ninety percent of the information now on the Internet was created in just the last two years.
CSC projects that by 2020 the world will have 44 times as much data as existed in 2009. And according to IDC, the overall Big Data market is growing at 27% a year and will hit $32 billion by the end of 2017.
Source: Money Morning