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AWS Lake Formation vs Apache Hadoop comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Hadoop
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (12th)
AWS Lake Formation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th)
 

Featured Reviews

NR
Financial Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Reliable performance maintained but requires ongoing management and support
Hadoop was used for years, but there were problems since the people who originally set it up left the firm. The group that owned it later didn't have the technical resources to properly maintain it. Although there was nothing wrong with Hadoop itself, issues arose without proper management and upgrades.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the database."
"One valuable feature is that we can download data."
"Hadoop is more for analytical processing, and while other databases claim to have a distributor, Hadoop is far better in that regard and is excellent compared to other options."
"The scalability of Apache Hadoop is very good."
"Hadoop is designed to be scalable, so I don't think that it has limitations in regards to scalability."
"Hadoop has also made it feasible to have all the data available in one area."
"The most valuable thing about this program for us is that it is very powerful and very cheap."
"The solution is perfect for when you have big data."
"The solution has many features that are applicable to events such as audits."
"We use AWS Lake Formation typically for the data warehouse."
"I can easily move data from cold storage to regular storage."
"The LF-Tag system with granular permissions was key to the project as a functionality of AWS Lake Formation."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"We have observed measurable benefits in terms of cost savings, time savings, resource savings, and efficiency improvements in our workflows."
"AWS Lake Formation lets you see all your data and tables on one screen."
"Every solution has its pros and cons, however, for our purposes, this solution works quite well for us."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful to have more information on how to best apply this solution to smaller organizations, with less data, and grow the data lake."
"It needs better user interface (UI) functionalities."
"I think more of the solution needs to be focused around the panel processing and retrieval of data."
"From the Apache perspective or the open-source community, they need to add more capabilities to make life easier from a configuration and deployment perspective."
"It requires a great deal of learning curve to understand."
"In the next release, I would like to see Hive more responsive for smaller queries and to reduce the latency."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The solution needs a better tutorial. There are only documents available currently. There's a lot of YouTube videos available. However, in terms of learning, we didn't have great success trying to learn that way. There needs to be better self-paced learning."
"It falls short when it comes to more granular access control, such as cell-level or row-level entitlements which is a significant drawback for organizations that require precise control over who can access specific rows of data."
"If I could improve AWS Lake Formation, I would add more integrations with SageMaker."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"The UI of AWS Lake Formation is not very responsive."
"I haven't seen any measurable benefits from using AWS Lake Formation, such as time saving, resource saving, or efficiency improvements."
"AWS Lake Formation's pricing could be cheaper."
"AWS Lake Formation might not be easy to learn initially, especially for technical staff, due to various underlying options."
"There are areas that could be improved in AWS Lake Formation, and functionality that could be included in future releases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​There are no licensing costs involved, hence money is saved on the software infrastructure​."
"Do take into consider that data storage and compute capacity scale differently and hence purchasing a "boxed" / 'all-in-one" solution (software and hardware) might not be the best idea."
"We don't directly pay for it. Our clients pay for it, and they usually don't complain about the price. So, it is probably acceptable."
"We just use the free version."
"It's reasonable, but there's room for improvement in cost-effectiveness."
"The product is open-source, but some associated licensing fees depend on the subscription level."
"This is a low cost and powerful solution."
"The price could be better. Hortonworks no longer exists, and Cloudera killed the free version of Hadoop."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Apache Hadoop?
The problem with Apache Hadoop arose when the guys that originally set it up left the firm, and the group that later owned it didn't have enough technical resources to properly maintain it. This wa...
What is your primary use case for Apache Hadoop?
My use cases for Apache Hadoop include the setups I completed, connecting to the database, and analyzing the incidences, making it a good tool for Hadoop. Apache Hadoop helps us analyze all of the ...
What advice do you have for others considering Apache Hadoop?
When I've dealt with open-source technologies, it's crucial that there's a mechanism for issue escalation. Structured support is invaluable, which is why I appreciate having technical account manag...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Adobe, eBay, Facebook, Google, Hulu, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Spotify, AOL, Twitter, University of Maryland, Yahoo!, Cornell University Web Lab
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
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