When we talk about Big Data, we nearly always associate Hadoop as the platform for storing huge amounts of data in a distributed environment. We often include MapReduce as the programming model for processing large data sets. Although it has been known for some time that MapReduce has limitations and is thus not universally applicable to all types of data processing, it has been the only available programming model until recently. Alternatives to MapReduce are emerging that challenge its existence in the future. — Article published in MonitorPro magazine, 02/2015, p. 24-25