Impact of Hadoop Technology on Core Business Functions

Data is generated so frequently and so fast, that organizations are finding it difficult to handle it, forget about the positive outcome. Digital sources like digital phones, sensors, social media and Internet of Things devices, being the major generators.
Apache Hadoop technology is emerging as a new leader in providing solutions like storing, processing and analyzing big data. It also provides better solutions in various key industrial areas.

What is Hadoop?

Hadoop consists of the following core components:

• Hadoop Common contains the libraries and utilities. It supports other Hadoop modules.
• Hadoop Distributed File System is based on Java and highly scalable. It permits data storage across multiple machines without any prior organization.
• MapReduce is a programming model. It uses parallel processing for big data sets, that may be structured and/or unstructured. It is known for reliability and has a high tolerance for variation and faults.
• YARN is a framework for resource management. It handles the scheduling of resource requests from many distributed applications, which are part of Hadoop implementation.

Hadoop solutions:

• It is a highly scalable storage platform as it can store and distribute large data sets across many servers running parallely.
• It is cost effective as it is designed to efficiently store a company’s data for future use.
• It is flexible as it enables businesses to generate data from various data sources like social media and email conversations.
• It is lightning quick. Hadoop can process terabytes of data in minutes.
• Fault tolerance – It replaces the original data so fast in case of any failure that the data remains intact.

Impact on Industries:

• Personal customer data and Insurance underwriting for Banks, Insurance Companies and Security Firms
• Call records for Telecom sector
• Trading risk for Financial services
• Personal relations with customers for Retail Market
• Supply chain & Logistics for the Manufacturing sector
• Patients’ vital signs for Healthcare
• Drug trials for Pharmaceuticals
• Data in real-time for the Oil & Gas industry
• Government programs

Impact on Core Business Functions:

• Security & Risk Management – The security solutions in current situation of big data are equal to nothing. Only Hadoop can go for real-time analysis of big data. It has the capability to assess risk. Therefore, it prepares the user with a contingency plan.

• Social Media Platform and Predictive Analytics – Recently, social media has made a rapid growth. It has become an interactive channel between the business and their customers and has the potential of increased revenue. At the social media platform level, Hadoop can address:
• Data Analysis to make real sense of the data.
• Multimedia optimization to increase revenue.
• Social media analysis to predict the end-user’s patterns.
• Customer view to know the interest level.
• Professional services for manufacturing clients to serve the end user.

Using the Internet of Things:

Business people can make better use of internet of things by utilizing the freely available data to provide real-time information on status, location, functionality, and so on. The big amount of data can offer valuable indications about the end users. Hadoop has a powerful platform for analyzing machine and sensor data. The Internet of Things and Hadoop together can provide answers to challenges like:

• Weather forecasting
• Timely warning of natural disasters
• Predictive analysis
• Ability to record and monitor patients’ vital signs

Active Maintenance:

The user can predict equipment failure and take appropriate corrective action well ahead of time by using Hadoop. This action saves a lot of operational cost. The solution must bring in these capabilities:

• Capture real-time as well as historical sensor data
• Analysis of generated data
• Evaluation of patterns related to normal and erratic behavior

Conclusion:

Hadoop technology can provide the right solution by approaching a zero downtime and monitor the health of equipment during runtime.