Hadoop is all the rage in analytics, but it still isn’t easy for mere mortals to utilize the big data framework to its fullest extent. A handful of companies are trying to solve this problem by making it more intuitive to derive insights from Hadoop, including Karmasphere with the latest version of its Analyst Big Data product.
Unlike some Hadoop startups that target business users, Karmasphere is trying to woo data analysts who are well versed in working within data warehouses but still need some guidance to translate that knowledge into a Hadoop environment. To that end, the company has devised a workflow for accessing, assembling, analyzing and acting upon big data. At a high level, here’s how Karmasphere defines each of the steps:
- Access – Connect to any Hadoop cluster on premises or in the cloud, adding metadata to describe Hadoop clusters and other data sources.
- Assemble – Gather, organize and prepare any kind of data; unstructured, semi-structured, structured,
including compressed data formats, on-the-fly to perform analytics.- Analyze – Query and interact with data on Hadoop, learn and iterate to discover patterns and trends for
insight.- Act – Deliver actionable, transformative insights to people and businesses.
The company explains its new approach to Hadoop workflows in a white paper also published today.
For anyone wondering where Karmasphere, as well as similar startups such as Datameer and Platfora, fits into the Hadoop ecosystem, the graphic below is pretty informative. They’re on the top level for focused on analytics, while companies such as Cloudera, EMC Greenplum and MapR operate on the lower level with their Hadoop distributions that focus on cluster management and performance.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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