Treasure Data's Hiro Yoshikawa: Taking The Open Road With Big Data

"There are four V's of Big Data that are often talked about: velocity, volume, variety and value. There is a fifth V that is often missing in many Big Data projects: viability. A lot of Big Data projects fail because they require too much upfront investment and maintenance. While hardware and Big Data-related technologies might be commoditized, the deployment of a successful Big Data solution will not be anytime soon."

Businesses and government agencies are in a race to gather, quantify and clarify an ever-increasing stream of data. Housing the bits and pieces of their digital treasures can be just as much of a problem as deciding whether to trust traditional relational platforms or adopt more flexible databases designed to handle unstructured data.

Solution providers have a dizzying collection of database products and Big Data storage offerings that add more complexity to the process; and if all of these options and concerns are not enough, be sure to add into the mix the contest between proprietary and open source products.