Top 5 Big Data Platforms You Should Know in 2025

Data Ingestion

Data ingestion refers to the process of data collection and importing from various sources. Ingestion can be understood as “the absorption of information”. The data files are imported from various data sources — third-party data providers, IoT devices, social media platforms, and SaaS apps, into a database for storage, processing, and analysis.

Some tools automate the data ingestion process. They organize raw data into suitable formats for effective data analytics software analysis.

Data Storage

After being ingested, data can be stored in data storage solutions. Reliable storage solutions are crucial for retrieval and processing. As big data platforms deal with large amounts of data, they typically utilize distributed storage systems. Some common systems include Hadoop HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System), Amazon S3, and Google Cloud Storage. NoSQL databases like MongoDB or Cassandra are another popular choice.

Data Processing

Data processing is the heart of big data platforms. This is where data is collected and transformed into meaningful and actionable insights. After removing errors and duplications, the information moves through data integration, which transforms it into meaningful insights. Data processing can be categorized into batch processing or real-time processing.

• Batch processing is suitable for high-volume data and often utilizes tools like Apache Hadoop.
• Real-time processing, on the other hand, processes data as it flows in. Apache Flink or FineDataLink are tools for this kind of data processing.

Data Management

Data management is another crucial operation when it comes to big data platforms. The massive data volume, data silos from multiple sources, and new data types are some of the fundamental challenges of data management. Organizations that want to utilize other technology, like artificial intelligence, must organize their data architecture to make the data usable and accessible. Hence, robust data management strategies are key to success. Key techniques to achieve successful data management include:

• Maintaining resiliency and disaster recovery of data.
• Building or obtaining fit-for-purpose databases.
• Ensuring business data and metadata sharing across organizations.
• Automating data discovery and analysis with generative AI.
• Employing data backup, recovery, and archiving techniques.

Data Analytics

Data analysis is a part of the data processing pipeline. With the use of data analytics tools and frameworks, teams unravel numerous insights, trends, and patterns. These tools and frameworks might involve machine learning models, data mining techniques or statistical analysis.

Data Visualization

Understanding pure numbers and text can be challenging at times. Data visualization tools like graphs, maps, and charts, it is easier for teams to pinpoint trends, patterns, or outliers.

Data Quality Assurance

Relying on data to make decisions requires careful data quality assurance. Low-quality data might cause inaccurate reports and even lower business efficiency. Techniques like data quality management, cataloging and lineage tracking allow organizations to have more confidence in the data quality, consistency and compliance.

Apache Hadoop

Developed in the early 2000s by Doug Cutting and Mike Cafarella, Apache Hadoop is an open-source framework built to process vast datasets across distributed clusters of computers. Key components like the HDFS and MapReduce allow businesses to store, process, and analyze structured and unstructured data on a large scale. Hadoop is popular among enterprises like Yahoo and Facebook due to its fault tolerance and scalability.

Hadoop can also perform data cluster analysis through integrations with tools like Apache Mahout, which provides scalable machine learning algorithms for clustering and classification. This platform allows efficient analysis of large datasets, but it can be complex to manage.

Apache Spark Amazon Redshift

Apache Spark was originally developed at UC Berkeley’s AMPLab in 2009. It’s a speedy open source analytics platform designed for large scale data processing. As one of the most popular data platforms, it excels in batch and real-time data processing and data in memory processing, which boosts the speed of handling tasks compared to traditional disk-based systems.

Spark is also a flexible big data platform. By supporting numerous programming languages like Java and Python, it’s accessible to a wide array of developers. It integrates with the Hadoop ecosystem and offers Spark SQL, a powerful library, for querying data. Other powerful libraries include MLlib or GraphX, making it a choice for organizations like Netflix, Airbnb, and Uber.

Google BigQuery

Developed by Google, Google Cloud BigQuery is a fully managed and serverless data warehouse designed for large-scale data processing. Some of Google Cloud BigQuery include:

• Scalable infrastructure supporting the storage, querying, and analysis of data
• Its ability to run fast SQL queries across large datasets
• Automatic scaling to meet demands – users are not required to manage the infrastructure
• Seamless integration with other services like Google Data Studio or Google Cloud Storage
• Built-in machine learning algorithms and geospatial analysis features, etc.

All of these features make it a choice for teams at The New York Times, Walmart, and Spotify.

Microsoft Azure HDInsight

Microsoft Azure HDInsight, developed by Microsoft, is a fully managed cloud service for processing and analyzing large datasets. The platform supports many other open-source frameworks like Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark. It is known for offering a scalable, reliable, and flexible infrastructure that allows users to deploy and manage clusters seamlessly. This feature also makes it an ideal choice for handling large data.

HDInsight boasts a robust ecosystem. This includes other services like Azure Data Lake or Azure Synapse Analytics. Like Spark, this platform supports Java, Python, and R. Companies like Starbucks and Boeing choose Azure HDInsight for its strong ecosystem, real-time analytics ability and strong security.

Databricks

Databricks provides a fully managed, scalable infrastructure with real-time data processing and complex analytics. Built on Apache Spark, Databricks aims to simplify the development and deployment of big data applications.

Johnson & Johnson and Salesforce chose Databricks because of their ability to code and collaborate efficiently. It provides developers with tools that streamline complex workflows, create easy data ingestion and processing, and accelerate data engineering, machine learning, and business analytics projects.