Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the support of many people, and I would like to acknowledge them and thank them for all the support and help in publishing this book.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my ever-supportive family of my wife and my two sons, who sacrificed many weekends, holidays, movies, school events, and social events (where I was absent) to provide me the quality time needed to think in developing the content of this book. Without your help and support, I would have never been able to dream and write this book.
Next is my dear friend, advisor, and business partner Bill Inmon, whose support and encouragement provided me the endurance to write this book while doing a full-time consulting job, working on a start-up company, and doing a zillion things. Bill, thanks for always being there and ready to help.
A very special thank you to the three best friends I have (and Im blessed to have these guys as my friends), Todd Nash, Hans Hultgren, and Shankar Radhakrishnan, who spent hours of time (during evenings, weekends, and on airplanes) reviewing the draft material and providing feedback at every step. Without their tireless contribution, we would not have made it through in time. Gentlemen, you are all amazing and your readiness to be a part of this incredible journey is not something that can be described in words. You guys are just incredible and it is great to have such friends who can do anything that it takes to make you feel special.
No book can be written based on theories alonehere is where many industry veterans came to help in the form of vendor support. Glenn Zimmerman of IBM, you were truly supportive in getting me all the case studies and even rewriting them to Word formats. Kim Dossey of Teradata, how much I thank you for all the support and quick turnaround of many case studies. Alan and Kate from Cloudera, you two were just wonderful in letting me choose as many case studies as needed without any hesitation. I would like to thank the Microsoft SQL Server team for the Klout case study. There are more case studies coming from Rainstor, Composite Software, and HortonWorks that will be added to the companion website. I would like to formally thank all these vendors for their undying support and readiness to help.
There are several friends who supported me in this journey with words of encouragement who I would like to mention and thank: Paul Kautza, Philip Russom, Dave Stodder, Dave Wells, Claudia Imhoff, Jill Dyche, Mark Madsen, Jonathan Seidman, Kylie Clement, Dave Nielsen, Shawn Rogers, John Myers, John OBrien, William McKinght, Robert Eve, Tony Shaw, and John Onder.
Last, but not least, my thanks to my editors Andrea Dierna, Heather Scherer, and the entire team at Morgan Kauffman for all the help, guidance, and support in this processwithout you, none of this was possible.
Thanks!
About the Author
Krish Krishnan is a recognized expert worldwide in the strategy, architecture, and implementation of high-performance data warehousing solutions and unstructured data. A sought-after visionary and data warehouse thought-leader and practitioner, he is ranked as one of the top strategy and architecture consultants in the world in this subject. Krish is also an independent analyst and a speaker at various conferences around the world on Big Data, and teaches at The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) on this subject. Krish, along with other experts, is helping drive the industry maturity on the next generation of data warehousing, focusing on Big Data, Semantic Technologies, Crowd Sourcing, Analytics, and Platform Engineering.
Krish is the founder president of Sixth Sense Advisors Inc., who provide industry analyst services covering the Data Warehouse, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Social Media and Business Intelligence. Krish also provides strategy and innovation consulting services with partner organizations across the globe.
Introduction
Web 2.0 has changed the way we conduct business, interact with customers, share information with friends and family, measure success in terms of business revenue and customer wallet share, and define brand management, and, most importantly, it has created a revenue channel like none other. Whether you plan your vacation, buy the newest television, switch your mobile service provider, or want to buy the best meat for your cookout, you turn to the Internet and look for customer reviews and reader recommendations. It is same situation in your personal life today when you want to share your music, movies, photographs, and videosyou have Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, Instagram, and Flickr.