Data Gathered From Walgreens Customers Needs To Be Managed, Analyzed

Walgreens Boots Alliance CIO Abhi Dhar has an intriguing data management problem. After creating a successful mobile app that is used by a million consumers every day, he now has to find a way to store, process and analyze all the customer data being collected. He is testing Hadoop software with the goal of replacing traditional relational databases with Hadoop clusters that handle text and video data more efficiently. Another benefit is the fact that Hadoop is a low-cost open source software that uses commodity servers. Dhar says that when the systems are able to scale across Walgreens’ 8,200 retail stores, they will be analyzed for insights about operations, logistics, and customers. Once that is accomplished, “we start driving more value for customers.”