Case Study: Yahoo Pioneers Hadoop In Operational Big Data Programs

Hadoop is still an immature technology, but it's rapidly evolving into an industry-standard approach to address the requirements of big data. Yahoo was the principal inventor of Hadoop and has been its prime mover within the open source community. The firm has also built the largest, most mature operational Hadoop deployment and the widest range of Hadoop applications among early adopters. Yahoo's primary Hadoop users are the data analysts and scientists who use the technology's massively advanced analytics horsepower to optimize many customer-facing business processes. These include optimizing ad placement, improving real-time customer experiences, targeting offers through behavioral analysis, and performing high-volume content mining and transformation. Business process professionals who are considering exploring the connection between big data and business process transformation should follow Yahoo's lead in setting up the technology as a shared enterprise component with robust availability, administration, and resource allocation across disparate business processes.