NSA, Accumulo & Hadoop

Reading yesterday that the NSA has submitted a proposal to Apache to incubate their Accumulo platform.  This, according to the description, is a key/value store built over Hadoop which appears to provide similar function to HBase except it provides “cell level access labels” to allow fine grained access control.  This is something you would expect as a requirement for many applications built at government agencies like the NSA.  But this also is very important for organizations in health care and law enforcement etc where strict control is required to large volumes of privacy sensitive data.

An interesting part of this is how it highlights the acceptance of Hadoop.  Hadoop is no longer just a new technology scratching at the edges of the traditional database market.  Hadoop is no longer just used by startups and web companies.  This is highlighted by outputs like this from organizations such as the NSA.  This is also further highlighted by the amount of research and focus on Hadoop by the data community at large (such as last week at VLDB).  No, Hadoop has become a proven and trusted platform and is now being used by traditional and conservative segments of the market.