R, Hadoop and SQL are the focus of the cover story in the May 2012 issue of ComputerWorld Canada:
Brian Bloom's article The Open-Source Answer to Big Data (also published in PCWorld) looks at the impact of open-source on enterprise IT architectures:
Cost, flexibility and the availability of trained personnel are major reasons for the open-source boom. Hadoop, R and NoSQL are now the supporting pillars of many enterprises' big data strategies, whether they involve managing unstructured data or performing complex statistical analyses on it.
...
[Former Forrester analyst] Kobielus wrote, platforms like Hadoop, R and NoSQL have enjoyed an advantage over proprietary software because they were able to evolve faster. They're also being continuously developed and refined by many different parties.
The article also looks at the influence of data scientists in large companies (and includes a quote from me):
Not surprisingly, the most brilliant minds with backgrounds in statistical modeling are also in the highest demand, especially since organizations in other sectors, like financial institutions, are scooping them up.
"They've hired a bunch of people out of school to a data science department or an R&D department and a modeling department," says Smith, "and they've found that all of them have been trained in R, and not in, say SAS."
The entire article is a great read, and you can find it at the link below.
ITWorld Canada: The open-source answer to big data


