
Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2014. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Jim Vogt, CEO at Zettaset
2014 Hadoop: An Era of enterprise-class security is about to begin
The majority of today's data is unstructured, meaning it is
raw and disorganized, and until the data can be organized into a structured
format for analysis it cannot be a source of useful information. Hadoop has
become an increasingly popular option to process, organize, and store huge
amounts of data, making it an appealing solution for data mining and business
analytics purposes. Back in 2012, the big prediction was that 2013 was to be
the break-out year for Hadoop. That didn't happen. Was it hype? Was it
completely wrong? In short, no.
Like any new technology, the adoption rate has not yet
reached the tipping point, but is steadily increasing. It looks like Hadoop will have its break-out
moment in 2014. The pundits were simply off by a year. This can be largely attributed to the fact
that Hadoop has many shortcomings that make it unsuitable for widespread adoption
across many enterprise organizations, especially those in verticals with strict
requirements for data security and compliance, such as financial services,
healthcare, and federal systems.
As we approach 2014 we have already seen growing interest in
Hadoop from financial services organizations that have collected massive
amounts of unstructured data and are seeking a cost-effective way to store,
organize, and extract business value from it. This demonstrates an uptick in Hadoop
deployment, even though many organizations are still in the exploratory
stage. Enterprises are not throwing out
their existing data storage and management technologies, however, but are
looking for ways for Hadoop to co-exist with relational databases, for
example. However, with all of the
progress in 2013 almost behind us, there are still many unanswered questions about
security.
Hadoop is working to overcome security hurdles in order to
achieve broader deployment. Branded open-source
Hadoop distributions today still lack the software automation that enterprises
have come to expect from their existing database systems. For example, open-source Hadoop lacks even
basic Active Directory integration capabilities, and user roles and permissions
must be manually entered. For larger
organizations, this is a painful, time-consuming process. Hadoop also lacks basic data-at-rest security
controls such as encryption. C-level
executives know that successfully integrating Hadoop into an organization
requires the right processes that ensure sensitive data contained in the Hadoop
cluster is fully protected.
Commercial software vendors like Zettaset have stepped in to
address the critical security needs of enterprises that are adopting Hadoop. The fragmented nature of the Hadoop ecosystem,
comprised of multiple branded Hadoop distributions and competing Hadoop
projects, makes it unlikely that the open source community can provide what is
needed in the near-term.
BI and analytics vendors are also beginning to
embrace Hadoop. They, too, seek a way to
ensure that the Hadoop database is secure and that access can be carefully
controlled. There are many exciting
developments on the horizon for Big Data in the year ahead, including the
roll-out of Hadoop 2.0. However, it will
not be open source projects that tip the scale, but the availability of
comprehensive, enterprise-class security capabilities from ISVs with expertise
in that domain that will make 2014 the break-out year for Hadoop.
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About the Author
With more than 25 years of leadership experience in both start-up and
established corporations, Jim Vogt brings a wealth of business and
technology expertise to his role as president and CEO of Zettaset. Most
recently, Jim served as senior vice president and general manager of the
Cloud Services business unit at Blue Coat Systems. Prior to Blue Coat,
he served as president and CEO at Trapeze Networks, which was acquired
by Belden, Inc. He was also president and CEO at data encryption
start-up Ingrian Networks (acquired in April, 2008 by SafeNet).