As Hadoop kicked off its 10-year anniversary at Spencer Dock in Dublin, Ireland, today, Herb Cunitz, president at Hortonworks, Inc., laid out four themes for Hadoop Summit – Dublin 2016.

Conference goals

The first theme is to help the enterprise manage data in motion and deliver value with that data. Secondly, data security from platform to the edge is also a priority. The next theme is community, interacting with other companies and sharing use cases. And, lastly, growing and creating value within the ecosystem are among the event topics.

Cunitz said that it is not just about Hadoop, but it is about community. “For the community, by the community,” he stated. And a poll of the audience showed that roughly 40 percent were actively using Hadoop to run apps, to which Cunitz noted, “This is a great opportunity to interact and learn.”

Transforming the world of business

Rob Bearden, CEO of Hortonworks, joined the keynote to discuss how data is transforming the world of business. He started by saying, “We’re not just trying to focus just on the tech, but the business value that you can drive by enabling a connected data platform.”

Key drivers

He spoke about preparing for the conference by looking back over the past four or five years. He said they noticed that over the last year more enterprise initiatives were not only about deriving business value but to begin changing the business model. He argued that there is a move to data in motion and a central architecture that drives predictive analytics across an enterprise deployment of Hadoop.

“Looking at the opportunities available today, and the transformation of businesses leveraging Hadoop to drive significant, hard ROI to bring business value back into the company, they can leverage these platforms to transform their IT architecture but to transform business model,” he observed.

As Bearden sees it, one of the key drivers that is moving the businesses to the Hadoop platform is the billions of connective devices and the doubling of volume data in the enterprise because of them. Companies are moving from a reactive, post-transaction strategy to a connective platform proactive strategy that anticipates the customer’s action.

“That’s one of the biggest movements we’ve seen … and now for the first time the opportunity to actually have the ability to interact with your customer or your product before a transaction or an event,” Bearden said.

Challenges

According to Bearden, the challenge in most enterprises today is that there is a constrained and closed architecture providing a consolidated view of their customer, supply chain and inventory. All the relationships with customers sit in siloed environments, and customers want the ability to have constant access to that collective body of data to engage with it in real time.

Today’s closed architecture limits businesses to only being able to engage with this data post-transaction or event. There is a large time gap between the data and understanding it.

Opportunity

There is a huge opportunity for business to transform and accelerate new product offering revenue generating opportunities and a different architecture in which companies manage their data, transform IT architecture and create new business models.

Bearden suggested that the value comes from engaging with the data from the point of origination through its movement cycle around an event or transaction. “The opportunity is to connect all the dispirit datasets and platforms into a constant life cycle from origin to when it rests,” he explained. “Manage, interact with and take action on as events occur. It is also important to make sure that data is secure. You have the ability to manage the entire lifecycle.”

Momentum

Bearden presented use-cases for customers with data in motion for the healthcare, industrial and retail sectors that underscored the value of real-time visibility in connective devices. He pointed out the value and revenue opportunities of having a 360-degree view of customers.

He said that the transformation is happening now and that it is critical to unlocking the value of data by taking existing data platforms and connecting into devices.

The journey

According to Carey James, business development manager of Big Data Solutions at EMC, the data analytics journey is evolving and the attention of the enterprise is on building applications to create actions and bring value to an organization.

“The first stop on the journey is to focus on business outcome and ask yourself, ‘What is the business question we are trying to answer?’” he said. He continued by saying that ‘If we build it they will come’ is no longer a reality because we do not know where we are going and we can get lost.

Simplification

James believes it is necessary to simplify the different steps across the journey, and that can be done by combining knowledge with other companies and creating self-service workspaces to address the business question.

He pointed out that developing solutions for customers to overcome the technical obstacles they encounter on the journey will ensure that they can focus on the business instead of technology.

Watch the full keynote 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