Sorting Through Big Data's Challenges Will Take Time

In theory, the rise of Hadoop in particular and big data in general should be creating opportunities for solution providers in the channel, but new markets pose new, often unforeseen challenges. A major one is not so much with the amount of data that needs to be analyzed, but rather the variety of it, according to the findings of a new survey of 111 data scientists conducted by Innovation Enterprise on behalf of data management system provider Paradigm4. In addition, almost a quarter admit they are not even sure what questions they should be trying to answer when they gain access to all that data. The study also concludes that, in terms of the platforms being deployed in support of these analytics applications, the open-source Hadoop framework is only part of the overall solution. In fact, 37 percent of the data scientists polled report they have tried and abandoned Hadoop. For solution providers in the channel, this does not mean that big data doesn't represent a huge potential opportunity, but it does mean that within most organizations big data use is still evolving in a way that may take some time before regularly benefiting solution providers in the channel. Here are key findings from the report.