Analysis: While technologies like #Spark continue to interest the maturity of the big data space means the messaging must change.
Businesses have now entered an era where data is vital to success, where differentiating on how they use data could be the path to the top of the market and where failure to do so, could see the demise of the business all-together.
Big data's impact on businesses has resulted in the creation of new C-level roles and posed the challenge of developing skills to be able to keep up with the demand for data analytic processing and the tools that have swamped the market.
While conferences are typically swamped with updates, enhancements, and the odd new product, the #Strata & #Hadoop Conference in London recently had a greater focus on strategy than it did technology.
To focus on data strategy is a sensible place for many of the tech vendors in the Hadoop ecosystem to go, after all, making money from consultancy style services would add another source of revenue in addition to the software, training and certification revenues which they already receive.
In the build up to the event, CBR talked to several vendors that have significant plays in Hadoop - Cloudera, Informatica, Trifacta, Hortonworks, and Cray. While all to some extent had their own product upgrades or new releases recently available, the theme of the conversations was predominantly around strategy.
Having an effective data strategy is clearly extremely important, without one a business is likely to fail in their strategy and with new regulatory requirements such as EU General Data Protection Regulation on the horizon, now seems to be an extremely apt time for vendors to be advising on how to get strategy right.
Clarke Patterson, senior director, product marketing, Cloudera told CBR that over the next several months the company would be talking more about a "journey to success" by helping businesses understand the people, process, and technology.
Patterson said: "I need to kind of peel apart the layers and understand which projects within It I am specifically going to attack first, which projects within Hadoop specifically I should be thinking about and then applying those to different departments and different strategic initiatives within the business."
This will help a business to figure out what businesses processes should be dealt with first, addressing whether there is a skills gap, and figuring out how to remedy that.
Patterson admitted that it isn't really a ground breaking concept but that the company had received a lot of feedback from customers about the difficulties posed by jumping in too deep with Hadoop.
Mixed in with this messaging is the placement of Cloudera's technology as an integral component, something that is mirrored by all the vendors I spoke to.
Informatica mirrored much of what Cloudera said, identifying the importance of people in addition to process and technology.
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