As the first day of the Hadoop Summit 2016 in Dublin drew to a close, with it came a time to review the announcements and discussions of the day, as well as parse out the biggest and most subtle industry indicators.

John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, review Day 1 highlights, and for just the first day of the event, there was already a mountain of material to be examined.

Conferences and communities

The first of the topics put on the table was Microsoft, as its volume and considerable operational income gives the company significant clout in shaping the field. Referring back to theCUBE‘s interview with Microsoft’s CTO of data, Raghu Ramakrishnan, earlier that day, Furrier and Vellante touched on several aspects of the company’s work to adapt itself to current Hadoop market changes, particularly in the realm of data-management, before moving on the address the summit itself.

As Furrier noted, there were a number of qualities distinguishing the Hadoop Summit conference from that of the Strata Hadoop event. As he put it, “On one hand you have the walled garden of O’Reilly [sponsoring Strata Hadoop] … and this event is more community, not commercialized at all.” This point led into a consideration of community importance, not only to conferences, but to the companies behind them.

Global web presences

From there, discussion moved to theCUBE‘s own international expansion, with Furrier stating, “The thirst for this global community content is really, to me, the most fascinating thing about the media business,” and then on to the importance of a social presence online. Given the breadth of this topic, theCUBE‘s team took some time to explore the ramifications of what Furrier termed Facebook’s “owning the web” and Vellante’s thoughts on how “data is flattening [the world] even further.”

Vellante also touched on how the global stage was being evidenced at the day’s event in Dublin, as, “When you talk to the Hadoop practitioners around here, you can’t really tell a difference between what’s here and what’s in America. And in some cases, they’re even more advanced [over here].”

But what drew some of the most energetic discussion was when the duo moved on to the downsides and potential failings of Hadoop. From Vellante’s perspective, in talking with conference attendees, there wasn’t enough substance around integration and implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) functionality through Hadoop adopters, with several still seeing it as “a shiny new toy.”

More seriously, Vellante also felt that there was a deficit in Hadoop’s impact, that it perhaps wasn’t living up to all of its hype: “People aren’t talking more [this year] about the impact that Hadoop’s having on their businesses.”

Furrier addressed another of Hadoop’s troubles: “I think Hadoop ecosystem is failing the customers. They’ve got to write better software faster.” While he recognized that the open-source nature of the code brought with it an inherent reduction in speed, it remained a point of concern.

Anticipating big changes

Projecting forward to try and imagine how market-movers might react, adjust and reshape strategies, Furrier and Vellante had a number of specific companies and their brands to address, in addition to broader tech expectations.

“I think the cloud … will accelerate [the process of] change fast,” Furrier said. “I believe that this community of Hadoop, this ecosystem, is realizing that the game isn’t about Hadoop anymore. … You’re going to see consolidation in this industry around a solid community.”

Vellante agreed, noting an imperative prompted by the rate of development: “I think the cloud game with Amazon is moving so damn fast that this has to come together.” And as Furrier pointed out, “If Amazon is only now becoming enterprise-grade, it’s going to be even harder for … those other ecosystem players to [catch up].”

Facebook and marketing

The conversation wrapped up with a thoughtful look at Facebook, and its practice, as Furrier saw it, of “stealing a lot of Google’s moves.” He also felt, “Facebook’s data-centers could easily … be a new sort of social [content delivery network],” agreeing with Vellante that big companies need to think of Facebook as a competitor.

On the other hand, Furrier didn’t expect that “Facebook’s going to be very successful with brands,” and voiced doubt that companies would be looking to pay for the sort of direct individual market identity data that Facebook would be looking to monetize. Finally, Vellante and Furrier touched on privacy and security concerns, with Furrier concluding that these days “nothing is secure.”

Watch the full video below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Hadoop Summit 2016 – Dublin. And make sure to join in during theCUBE’s live coverage during the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

Photo by SiliconANGLE