Apache Spark vs. IBM Analytics Engine

Well suited: To most of the local run of datasets and non-prod systems - scalability is not a problem at all. Including data from multiple types of data sources is an added advantage. MLlib is a decently nice built-in library that can be used for most of the ML tasks. Less appropriate: We had to work on a RecSys where the music dataset that we used was around 300+Gb in size. We faced memory-based issues. Few times we also got memory errors. Also the MLlib library does not have support for advanced analytics and deep-learning frameworks support. Understanding the internals of the working of Apache Spark for beginners is highly not possible.

Incentivized

• Well suited for my big data related project or a static data set analysis especially for uploading huge dataset to the cluster.
• But had some issues with connecting IoT real-time data and feeding to Power BI. It might be my understanding please take it as a mere comment rather than a suggestion.

Incentivized

• Rich APIs for data transformation making for very each to transform and prepare data in a distributed environment without worrying about memory issues
• Faster in execution times compare to Hadoop and PIG Latin
• Easy SQL interface to the same data set for people who are comfortable to explore data in a declarative manner
• Interoperability between SQL and Scala / Python style of munging data

Incentivized

• Jobs with Spark, Hadoop, or Hive queries are rapidly attained
• Can collect, organize and analyze your data accurately
• You can customize, for example, Spark or Hadoop configuration settings, or Python, R, Scala, or Java libraries.

Incentivized

• Memory management. Very weak on that.
• PySpark not as robust as scala with spark.
• spark master HA is needed. Not as HA as it should be.
• Locality should not be a necessity, but does help improvement. But would prefer no locality

Incentivized

• Easier pricing and plug-and-play like you see with AWS and Azure, it would be nice from a budgeting and billing standpoint, as well as better support for the administration.
• Bundling of the Cloud Object Storage should be included with the Analytics Engine.
• The inability to add your own Hadoop stack components has made some transfers a little more complex.

Incentivized

Capacity of computing data in cluster and fast speed.

If the team looking to use Apache Spark is not used to debug and tweak settings for jobs to ensure maximum optimizations, it can be frustrating. However, the documentation and the support of the community on the internet can help resolve most issues. Moreover, it is highly configurable and it integrates with different tools (eg: it can be used by dbt core), which increase the scenarios where it can be used

Incentivized

1. It integrates very well with scala or python. 2. It's very easy to understand SQL interoperability. 3. Apache is way faster than the other competitive technologies. 4. The support from the Apache community is very huge for Spark. 5. Execution times are faster as compared to others. 6. There are a large number of forums available for Apache Spark. 7. The code availability for Apache Spark is simpler and easy to gain access to. 8. Many organizations use Apache Spark, so many solutions are available for existing applications.

Spark in comparison to similar technologies ends up being a one stop shop. You can achieve so much with this one framework instead of having to stitch and weave multiple technologies from the Hadoop stack, all while getting incredibility performance, minimal boilerplate, and getting the ability to write your application in the language of your choosing.

Incentivized

We initially wanted to go with Google BigQuery, mainly for the name recognition. However, the pricing and support structure led us to seek alternatives, which pointed us to IBM. Apache Spark was also in the running, but here IBM's domination in the industry made the choice a no-brainer. As previously stated, the support received was not quite what we expected, but was adequate.

Incentivized

• Business leaders are able to take data driven decisions
• Business users are able access to data in near real time now . Before using spark, they had to wait for at least 24 hours for data to be available
• Business is able come up with new product ideas

Incentivized

• This product has allowed us to gather analytics data across multiple platforms so we can view and analyze the data from different workflows, all in one place.
• IBM Analytics has allowed us to scale on demand which allows us to capture more and more data, thus increasing our ROI.
• The convenience of the ability to access and administer the product via multiple interfaces has allowed our administrators to ensure that the application is making a positive ROI for our business users and partners.

Incentivized