This webcast will give an overview of deploying Hadoop within the organization as a strategic initiative for business advantage. Rather than viewing distributed databases as an incremental solution to an IT problem, Ioana Hreninciuc and Andrew Brust will look at the bigger picture: what can Hadoop do not for the database administrators but for the organization as a whole? Business users have problems and budgets to fix them, but Hadoop is a technical product sold by technical people. The market for big data intake and analytics is growing but the people who could support this growth more than anyone are the business users, not IT managers. IT is shrinking or in some cases completely outsourced so it becomes very difficult to take bold steps in IT. It is essential to consider the strategic questions in prioritizing Hadoop and other technologies. This webcast will give a framework and starting point in these issues: IT or business user – who benefits more from deploying Hadoop? Who could or should bring Hadoop into the organization? Is Hadoop really necessary? What are the organization’s alternatives? How can you leverage an existing Hadoop deployment from your organization? What should a business user know about Hadoop? How long does it take to get started with Hadoop? Is Hadoop as a Service a reasonable alternative for your organization? What are the PROs and CONs of Hadoop as a Service? About Ioana Hreninciuc, Commercial Director, Bigstep Ioana is the Commercial Director of Bigstep, in charge with setting the right strategy for operations and clients. She has 5 years of experience in advertising and digital publishing and 4 years in the European hosting industry. Her focus is on the business benefits derived from working with cloud services and technology. She had a major contribution to the development of Full Metal Cloud, the fastest cloud in the world, purpose built for big data. Ioana is a continuous explorer of big data industry and passionate evangelist of @BigStepinc. Twitter: @ioanahr