No, Seriously, Hadoop Is NOT a Data Integration Solution

Gartner analyst Merv Adrian picked up the “Hadoop is not a data integration solution” baton from fellow analyst Ted Friedman this week.

I’m not sure what prompted Adrian to write this piece, but I can only imagine it involved a lot of vendor calls, begging to disagree with the original premise.

As I pointed out last week, Informatica’s Todd Goldman countered that while Hadoop may not be a data integration solution, it was capable of being made into a data integration platform. And he offered an example.

Whether it’s to Goldman’s post or calls to Gartner, or maybe a combination of both, Adrian is certainly responding to something, and specifically he is taking to task this idea of a Hadoop solution.

“Moreover, even to the degree that some pieces/projects might meet some of the needs, there is nothing that ties them together into a ‘solution,’ which itself was a carefully chosen word,” Adrian writes. “Today, with Hadoop projects in general, we very often see bespoke, self-integrated, ‘build it yourself and good luck operating it’ structures. By contrast, solutions, including those for data integration, provide the relevant pieces coherently in a way that ties together design, operation, optimization and governance.

“Leaving aside the absence of data quality tools or profiling tools of any kind in today’s supported Hadoop project stack, we don’t see that yet.”

He specifically explains how this impacts Talend’s rating in the Magic Quadrant for data integration tools, if you’re curious.

So, to summarize, Hadoop can be a platform, but platforms are not solutions, according to Gartner. Also, Gartner holds firm in its contention there is no data integration solution built on a Hadoop platform.

I think most people use “solution” very loosely, so this may seem a bit pedantic. Still, it makes sense once you understand the difference between platform and solution.