by Angela Guess
Brian Profitt of ReadWriteWeb recently argued that Big Data isn’t just a tool for big companies. He writes, “2013 is going to be 12 full months of hype surrounding the Big Data craze, with tantalizing tales of e-commerce analytics that will move beyond predicting pregnancies to doing something really cool: like figuring out the Last Twinkie Ever Bought. As the hype continues, smug enterprise IT departments will whip out their thick wallets and plunk down serious coin for multi-cluster hybrid cloud Hadoop systems that can figure out the worldwide effects of a butterfly wings’ flapping before brunch and knock out the Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything before afternoon tea rolls past. Meanwhile, poor and tattered small business IT managers will look enviously on this feast of big data as they huddle out in the cold, shivering as they wrap themselves in tiny spreadsheets and Quickbook invoices.”
He goes on, “It’s easy to get that impression when thinking about Big Data, but the reality can be far different: While enterprise-level datasets can be costly and difficult to manage, there’s no reason analytical and visualization techniques can’t be applied to small- to medium-sized business (SMB) datasets – on an SMB budget. Plugging small businesses into big data is not a new idea… Perhaps the most popular approach to solving the problem includes ‘Big-Data-as-a-Service’ options. There are two large obstacles to taking on big data methodologies, according to Amit Bendov, CEO of Tel Aviv-based SiSense. The first is breaking past the barrier of cost. SAP HANA appliances, which Bendov holds up as an example of what he’s talking about, can handle about half a terabyte of data, with a price tag of $500,000. That may work for the enterprise, but is nowhere near realistic at the small business level.”
photo credit: ceng design
