Hadoop

For some time Microsoft didn't offer a solution for processing big data in cloud environments. SQL Server is good for storage, but its ability to analyze terabytes of data is limited. Hadoop, which was designed for this purpose, is written in Java and was not available to .Net developers. So, Microsoft launched the Hadoop on Windows Azure service to make it possible to distribute the load and speed up big data computations.

"Big data" is the buzzword of the day, and learning to manage it and extract value from it is top of mind for executives across industries. A contributing factor to the surge in big data is a shift in prevailing corporate data management philosophies.

Facebook has beaten some of the limitations of the Apache Hadoop data processing platform, its engineers assert.

Doug Cutting, creator of Hadoop and founder of the Apache Hadoop Project, says big data is not hype and it's not a bubble. He lays out his vision of how Hadoop will become the Holy Grail of big data systems

As organizations continue to evaluate Hadoop for large scale data analysis, Hadoop software vendors are refining their products for enterprise use, addressing concerns around reliability and expanded use.

Which of today's newest shipping technologies will cast the longest shadow over business computing? Here are our best guesses

Hadoop training courses and certification programs are available from companies including Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM and MapR. But if you're not ready to commit to formal training courses, there are also free resources that can get a newcomer started on Hadoop or broaden a veteran's skills.

Enterprises are adopting Hadoop faster than they can hire IT talent to build and maintain these distributed computing deployments. To fill the gap, many are turning to partners that can offer a mix of Hadoop consulting, software development and training services.

With the Hadoop Summit taking place this week in San Jose, California, vendors supporting the open-source data-analysis platform are rushing new products to market.

Finding developers with the skills to create MapReduce jobs in Apache Hadoop is challenging, but you can ease that hiring pain with Cascading, an open source Java application framework for building enterprise Big Data applications on Hadoop.