Technical elements of the big data platform

Our discussion, so far, has been focused on the high-level characteristics of design and deployment of big data solutions in an enterprise environment. We will now shift attention to the technical aspects of such undertakings. From time to time, we’ll incorporate high-level messages where appropriate in addition to the technical underpinnings of the topics in discussion.

At the technical level, there are primarily two main considerations:

• Selection of the hardware stack
• Selection of the software and BI (business intelligence) platform

Over the recent 2-3 years, it has become increasingly common for corporations to move their processes to cloud-based environments as a complementary solution for in-house infrastructures. As such, cloud-based deployments have become exceedingly common and hence, an additional section on on-premises versus cloud-based has been added. Note that the term On-premises can be used interchangeably with In-house, On-site, and other similar terminologies.

You’d often hear the term On-premise being used as an alternative for On-premises. The correct term is On-premises. The term premise is defined by the Chambers Dictionary as premise noun 1 (also premises) something assumed to be true as a basis for stating something further. Premises, on the other hand, is a term used to denote buildings (among others) and arguably makes a whole lot more sense.