Hoarding has a bad name. Popular TV programmes such as The Hoarder Next Door, Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder in the UK and Hoarding: Buried Alive in the US show hoarding in a very bad light. After all, why can’t they just throw away that 10-year-old newspaper?
What drives the hoarders’ motivation to keep everything they own is the fear that they’ll throw away something that may become useful or valuable one day. It’s a fear that we all, to some extent, have. How many times have you thrown something away, just to find out you needed it the next day?
Sometimes hoarding can pay off. In an episode of the much-loved comedy series ‘Only Fools and Horses’, Rodney is cataloguing stock in the Trotter’s garage. His brother, the infamous ‘Del Boy’, comes across a pocket watch hidden away, and not realising its value he’s tempted to chuck it away. Luckily, he changes his mind; and it turns out to be worth an absolute fortune. You can relive the episode here.
What if you could get the best of both worlds? Never throw away anything that is potentially valuable and at the same time keeping your house clutter free and clean. How would you do it? One solution could be to build yourself some cheap storage in your garden, or rent out some space with a storage company. Then you can look for valuable items at your leisure.
The data hoarder next door
In the world of IT, that’s exactly what you can do. Why delete some potentially useful data, when you can store it cheaply, tidily and search through it easily?
That’s what the SAS Data Loader for Hadoop and Big Data Innovation Lab let you do. Store all of your data cheaply and easily using Hadoop, then layer on the SAS Data Loader to tidy up the data integration for better quality. You can then use the Big Data Innovation Lab to experiment and find out what insights you can extract from the data.
Why take the risk of throwing all your data away? You never know, you might find the digital equivalent of a gold watch when you start looking properly.
Find out more with this free trial of SAS Data Loader for Hadoop. There is more here about the Big Data Innovation Lab, and you can also check out the report, Bringing the Power of SAS to Hadoop.
