Large companies have long used big data analytics to comb through vast amounts of data in a short amount of time. Companies with deep pockets and ever-expanding amounts of data have built large server clusters dedicated to mining data. Hadoop clusters can help small and medium-sized businesses lacking big budgets benefit from big data.

Have you ever wondered how search engines guess what you want to type in the search field before you finish typing it, or offer suggestions of related queries? Maybe you’ve noticed that Facebook or LinkedIn recommend people you may know based on your connections? These are two examples of Hadoop clusters processing large amounts of data in fractions of a second.

Created by the Apache Foundation, Hadoop is an open source product built to run on commodity hardware. The most expensive part of building a Hadoop cluster involves the compute and storage resources. Server virtualization can help reduce that cost, bringing big data analytics to budget-constrained organizations.

“Big Data” and “Analytics” are more than just buzzwords, they are business gold mines waiting to be discovered. To read more on this topic, visit TechTarget and read my article “Virtualization makes big data analytics possible for SMBs“. As always, please come back here and leave any comments.