Hadoop for Business: Interview with Mike Olson, Cloudera CEO

Roberto asked Michael Olson, CEO of Cloudera a number of questions on Hadoop, why it is important, and how it is used for business.

"You should think of Hadoop in kind of the same way that you think of a relational database. All by itself, it's a general-purpose platform for storing and operating on data. What makes the platform really valuable is the application that runs on top of it." says Olson.

"These days, data comes from machines talking to machines. The servers, switches, routers and disks on your LAN are all furiously conversing. The content of their messages is interesting, and also the patterns and timing of the messages that they send to one another. (In fact, if you can capture all that data and do some pattern detection and machine learning, you have a pretty good tool for finding bad guys breaking into your network.) Same is true for programmed trading on Wall Street, mobile telephony and many other pieces of technology infrastructure we rely on.
Hadoop knows how to capture and store that data cheaply and reliably, even if you get to petabytes." explains Olson.

When asked by looking at three elements: Data, Platform, and Analysis, what are the main business and technical challenges ahead, Michael Olson comments: "Data is the big one. Seriously: More. More complex, more variable, more useful if you can figure out what's locked up in it. More than you can imagine, even if you take this statement into account."

The full text of the interview is available at the ODBMS Industry Watch Blog:

www.odbms.org/blog/