Big Data Geography

I met with Walt Maguire, Big Data Chief Field Technologist for HP Enterprise (that's a truly great job title) today. Sharp guy, as you would expect. Lots of good technical insights, as you would also expect. I could write about that, but most of it is already on HP's website in the form of various white papers. One quasi-technical observation that I thought was both funny and instructive was the geographical differences in the approach to technology adoption. This one probably isn't on HP's website, though I'm sure he doesn't mind me sharing it.

On the West Coast, particularly Silicon Valley, companies just want the ideas and the enabling technology. They'll write the actual implementations themselves. In a few cases, this makes sense. Facebook and Google really are breaking new ground in terms of data volume, so no off-the-shelf solution is going to work for them. But, he sees it more as a pervasive culture thing than necessity. They just think that they'll do a better job. And, since they do pay the highest IT salaries, they're often right.

On the East Coast, what they want is certification and compliance. They aren't so concerned about whether it's the latest and greatest. They want to know that it will work and that it won't get them in trouble with regulators.

Midwestern companies tend to be later adopters; looking for both proven technologies and the big price breaks that come by being a version behind. In short, they're looking for how to get the job done without putting a lot of capital at risk.

He didn't mention the South. Having several industry friends in Texas and having just worked with a consulting group from Atlanta on another project, I could speculate that they're biased towards open source platforms since they are also trying to control costs, but are less risk averse because they generally have pretty strong technical talent available to fill in the gaps.

He wasn't advocating one philosophy over any of the others; just noting that there are many ways to get this stuff done and the best solution for one organization isn't necessarily the best for another. Of course, anybody who knows anything about business already knows that, but putting it in geographical terms was an interesting way to frame it.