Martyn Jones

Martyn Richard Jones

Bruxelles 4th June 2018

The Big Data bullshit well was always going to run dry. They didn’t believe me.

Now it’s very clear.

They were wrong. I was right. I told them so.  

Gloat? Me? Why, hell yeah!

I am laughing at the shameless and opportunistic fools, charlatans and chancers of Big Data and the Hadoop ecosphere, because it’s the very least they deserve.

Why? You may ask… Here’s why. I’ll give you some whys.

One. They claimed that Hadoop was far more than just some software for creating massive fail-safe file-store systems running on clusters of cheaper commodity-hardware; yet they have been proved wrong.

Two. They claimed that search tools for Hadoop were far more sophisticated than anything any database management technology provided before; and  in this too they have been proven conclusively to have been wrong.

Three. They claimed that more data was implicitly better data and more data meant greater business insight and greater business value. They proclaimed big data as the business saviour and hailed Hadoop as its unique enabling instrument; they also got that massively wrong.

No. Hadoop is dying because big data is mainly about bullshit; especially in the press, on social media and amongst the preening and babbling pundits who basically targeted anyone who would listen with their revolutionary lies, innuendo and half-truth. Ain’t that so, Bernie?

So what went wrong? I’ll give you some examples.

First, Hadoop was designed to address a specific type of problem, for example, to examine and index all of the web sites in the whole known universe. It was not designed as a general purpose anything and certainly not as a general purpose database for things such as enterprise data warehousing.

Secondly. In spite of that, many big data clowns claimed that Hadoop could replace mainstream database technologies, especially in areas such as data warehousing. They got that wrong as well.

Thirdly. The Hadoop Big Data success stories never came backed with tangible, cohesive or verifiable facts. It was all so much conjecture. So much coyness. So much bullshit. I even ran a competition on to find the biggest Big Data success story. The outcome? No winners. No entrants. Nothing! Nada! Zilch!

According to Gartner there was a “continuing enthusiasm for the big data phenomenon”. However, “demand for Hadoop specifically is not accelerating.”

Hadoop companies were spending big-time on marketing, and I mean big time spending, and lo and behold, the sales were also dipping as fast as the prospects evaporated.

You might even have noticed it. Of course, this couldn’t go on forever. You cannot maximise your marketing spend beyond your obvious means when your revenues are heading south, and not even the most naïve of angels or other types of investors will keep on pumping money into misguided corporate-welfare for too long.

The bottom line can be simple stated. Even if you’re flogging a moribund yellow elephant, you make bank or you die.

Me, I’m not sad at the sight of bullshit being consigned to the crap-heap of history. I’m just sorry that it takes for long and that so many people and business get burned and that workers have their careers messed up in the process.

Many thanks for reading.


I’m Martyn Jones at the good strategy company