Perhaps you're a big data expert who is fluent in Pig, Hive, MapR and all the technologies associated with the open source big data framework. Or maybe your role hasn't yet been touched by the increasingly popular Hadoop system. It's certainly worth a few minutes of your time (or perhaps much more depending on your job) to have an unsderstanding of this cost-effective system that employs commodity servers to store huge amounts of data.

Allied Market Research says the Hadoop market was $2 billion in 2013 and is expected to show a compound annual growth rate of 58 percent between 2013 and 2020 when annual Hadoop spending will top $50 billion globally--about the same as the current market capitalization of Time Warner or General Motors.

So, if your knowledge of Hadoop ends at "something to do with big data," check out this three-minute video that provides an overview of this promising and emerging technology.

The Hadoop Ecosystem explained

SAS, uniquely able to help enterprises exploring Hadoop, is investing heavily in software for our customers. These enterprises know that the data they pour into Hadoop clusters contains the analytic fuel for business-driving, big insights. We have already brought to market analytics and data management software for Hadoop environments and you can expect to see plenty more.

There's more to it than hype. And if you want to go a bit deeper with learning about Hadoop and its benefits check out these Hadoop resources.

Oh, and if you're wondering where Hadoop got such a goofy-sounding name, know that Hadoop co-creator Doug Cutting named it after his young son's toy elephant in 2005. Given the long memories attributed to elephants, it's probably not as silly as it seems at first.