Rafer on MapReduce vs. SQL

I really liked this comment from Scott Rafer on the ‘MapReduce vs. SQL: It’s Not One or the Other‘ GigaOM post:

Lookery and hundreds of other companies, many cloud-hosted, are building new business processes that are optimized for MapReduce and similar architectures. In many — even most — cases, these business processes will be far more cost-effective than the ones they will replace. New incumbents will arise, new benchmarks written, and new statistics reported by analysts with new biases.

Companies invested in SQL apps that can be replaced, most often indirectly, by MapReduce-esque apps need to start self-cannibalizing.

We’ve seen this dynamic before in the SaaS market.  SaaS products tend to be less customizable than their enterprise software counterparts, but SaaS customers are often willing to alter their business processes to take advantage of what can be major cost savings and cost avoidance (as compared to supporting or purchasing an enterprise software solution).

Maybe the dynamic will play out on the database side as well?

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