Data Integration Blog -

Big data is clearly a hot topic these days, and organizations are beginning to see how it can affect their internal processes. I wanted to share a recent article that I came across discussing this topic which came from ZDNet Analyst and Contributing Editor Joe McKendrick titled, “Big Data forces IT to press reset button on architecture.” In the article, Joe discusses how big data is causing IT to rethink data architecture, and cites a recent blog post by Forbes’ Dan Woods in which he “makes a strong case for a new approach to data architecture.”

McKendrick writes, “Perhaps it’s time to stop thinking in terms of ‘data warehouses,’ which evoke images of industrial-era, highly structured framework, and think of something more fluid and expansive, such as a ‘data lake,’” (a terms coined by James Dixon, CTO of Pentaho). He adds, “Woods describes some new forms of repositories that have ‘data lake’ flexibility – such as Pentaho’s use of Apache Hadoop, Pervasive’s Data Rush, and complex event processing tools. Enterprise search technologies will also play a key role in the new data architecture. I even speculated on the possibility a couple of years ago, after hearing about ING’s database-free deployment. Plus, the ability to analyze search data may open new possibilities for understanding future directions for the business.”

Check out the entire blog by visiting, ZDNet.