First off, I'm a mainframe developer, so I don't know much about Java or Web technology.
I work at an insurance company as a software developer. We have a website to get quotes, raise and view claims and such. I came to know about Hadoop and that I might be able to leverage it to the advantage of my company. I'm planning to transition myself into Hadoop and propose a Hadoop initiative to my company to leverage our web usage data. Here are my questions: 1) How much web usage data will a typical website like ours collect on a daily basis? (I know I can ask our IT department, but I would like to gather some background idea before talking to them.) 2) What is the minimum size of data that is recommended for a Hadoop system? 3) How many clusters/nodes would I need to run a web usage analytics system? 4) What are the ways for me to use our data? (One use case I'm thinking of is to analyze the error messages log for each page on quote process to redesign the UI. Is this possible?) 5) How long would it take for me to set up and start such a system? 6) What would be the cost to my company to maintain such a system? 7) What kind of savings can I expect in return? I'm sorry if some/all of these questions are unanswerable. I just want to discuss my thoughts, and get an idea of what things can I achieve by going the way of Hadoop. Thanks! Mani
