Open Source Data Solutions Offer Enterprises More than Cost Savings

Forrester predicted earlier this year that we’d see more open source data tools find their way into the enterprise this year, thanks in no small part to the fact that open source rules the Big Data space.

James Kobielus, who is now a Big Data evangelist for IBM but was then an analyst for Forrester Research, made the case for why the enterprises doors are now open (ahem) for open source. I pointed out that he wasn’t alone: The TDWI had also foreseen a new era for open source data tools.

PC World wrote on this theme recently with a discussion about open source’s role in Big Data. One thing I found really revealing is that data scientists are graduating with a solid knowledge of R — an open source language for Big Data — but little knowledge of proprietary, GUI-based systems.