Why Oracle Big Data Appliance is the Best Approach to Big Data Analysis
Many people think that dealing with Big Data is problematic because of only one reason- the sheer volume of unstructured data it presents one with. But there are several other aspects related with Big Data and various ways to analyze it.
Out of many ways, one of the most common and popular ones is going for a Big Data appliance. Such infrastructure combines hardware and software capabilities to effectively work with Big Data and deliver reliable results.
Many companies have jumped in to provide Big Data solutions over the cloud, as standalone platforms, or on-premise solutions. Oracle has also added the Big Data Appliance in its lineup of products.
It is meant to be a powerful Big Data management platform that can be used to collect, organize, and analyze big volumes of data workloads arising from different verticals with speed.
The Oracle appliance can help enterprises form meaningful insight and make wise business decisions. But before you can understand how Oracle Big Data Appliances actually do this, you have to be familiar with a few things about Big Data.
The Difficulties of Working with Big Data
To begin with, the volume of big data is a challenge which is nowadays common to most data scenarios. Another issue is that the data is not structured and formal which prevents any standard database platform to handle it. Even the ability to compute, scale, or store may not be ideal for Big Data.
The data variety of Big Data and its unstructured, semi-structured, or mixed-structured nature also adds to the challenge. The data may come with multiple levels of structure, which is applicable for something as simple as a Microsoft Excel file.
The next challenge is posed by the speed of the data and its computing. In today’s connected world, gigabytes of data can be generated in seconds from different verticals like social media, emails, and others. They come with tremendous speed and the Big Data appliance has to be capable of handling it.
Another aspect which pairs with the incoming speed of data is the pace of analysis. The platform should be able to churn the data for analysis and produce the results in the expected time.
Let’s take a scenario to illustrate our point. Data analytic tools which deal with real time IoT data have to handle innumerable numbers of small packages of data that are constantly produced and thrown at it.
Another example can be drawn from the stock market. Comparing stocks based on multiple metrics should be done within seconds or milliseconds. Otherwise the result will not have any value for the investors, as the market is dynamic and always changing.
Big Data also brings in all kinds of data, some of which is useless. The data management platform should only identify and analyze quality data to generate quality insights.
Oracle Big Data Appliance: A Perfect Companion for your Big Data
The Big Data appliance concept has been developed so that all aspects of Big Data that we discussed above can be managed from a single platform. The Oracle appliance is open source friendly and can be connected to different environments like Hadoop, Spark, and NoSQL. By creating such an environment and hooking it up with relational and non-relational data stores, Oracle develops an intelligent system which ensures that right data is stored in the right place at the correct time.
You can also carry out Big Data workloads in SAS, Tableau, Qlik and other analytic frameworks which can be easily integrated with the appliance. The appliance can support third party extensions and analytics like Cloudera, WanDisco, and utilizes Oracle Big Data SQL for the SQL queries.
The Oracle Big Data Appliance comes with strong security features that are industry leading. The appliance carries out comprehensive authorization, authentication, and auditing of data in the Hadoop environment as a default task. The system also uses Apache Sentry to grant SQL access through tools like Impala. Oracle supports the encryption of network and resident data as well, with strong security protocols and innovation. The appliance can also identify anomalies and detect fraudulent processes.
All the technologies and the management platforms are developed and provided by Oracle. You can depend on them for all needs like deployment, maintenance, or any upgrades. This will produce far better results and lower the overall cost for deploying and running the appliance.
The Appliance delivers amazing performance, as it is preconfigured and optimized for analytics. It is also very easy to deploy and takes very little time. You can get the best out of your Big Data with an overall faster time to value.
The system can be scaled as your data grows, and comes with flexible configuration and wide hardware choices.
Oracle Big Data Appliance: Deployment Options
You can use the advantages of the Oracle Big Data Appliance in three ways:
Cloud
The Big Data appliance can be adopted as a cloud service. It will be delivered by Oracle with the full power of Spark and Hadoop. It can be a cost effective option for startups and small to medium companies who don’t want a high investment or commitment.
Data Center
A public cloud model can also be established by deploying the Oracle Big Data Appliance in your data center. It gives you more ownership and control as the system is hosted by your company.
On-Premise Deployment
Companies can have complete control of their Big Data by deploying the Oracle Appliance on-premise. It comes with optimized performance and provides the best results for companies with reliable IT infrastructure. You must also have the necessary IT staff and resources to maintain and take care of the system.
In conclusion, the Oracle Big Data Appliance is a multipurpose engineered infrastructure which streamlines data processes. It is an open infrastructure which helps you store, analyze, and scale big data effectively from a single platform.
