I don't recall where I heard this analogy, but I repeat it frequently.

"Not using a hadoop is like cutting down a forest with a single chainsaw. Using it is like cutting a forest down with unlimited hatchets. It will usually be faster and cheaper with the chainsaw."

I would second this. I've used Hadoop at two jobs, and both times the added overhead in terms of operational and programming complexity wasn't worth it. Most everything could have been done on a beefy machine with the most basic knowledge of parallel programming.

It's definitely a resume builder. The "Teradata" on my resume has sort of gone out of style. Other than cost, though, I've really not run into a practical situation where Hadoop would help me with something that Teradata wouldn't do. I work for large companies that can generally afford Teradata and to scale it as needed (Teradata is awesome when you need to scale easily), so my professional Hadoop experience is near zero.

I read the link and agree with most of it. All except for when he gets to the 5TB part, but I get that it was written in 2013 and probably not to a fortune 500 audience. If Teradata Cloud could get a reasonably priced entry level tier going, I think they'd be talked about a bit more.

I am learning this as part of academics, but I belive Map reduce was introduced for handling google page rank and it seemed to handle it well, so SHOULD I SAY "USE HADOOP BUT IN A SENSIBLE WAY WHERE IT REALLY HELPS" or is it like never use it ?