As veteran of the IT industry, I fall inline with the 10,000 hour rule in reference to Linux/Unix Systems Administration. Needless to say, as a wrangler of *nix based operating systems, most people would consider me an expert; although, I rarely feel that way. However, as of recent I’ve been doing a lot of work on Big Data platforms, including Hadoop, Elastic Search, MongoDB, and using tools such as Storm and Impala. While the install of these platforms is trivial, I can unequivocally say that the tuning is not. This brings me to the point, The Case for Managed Services. I’m fortunate enough to be working with some very sharp guys in the Big Data industry right now, the folks over at InfoChimps. They have developed a Big Data managed service platform that is, in my opinion, unrivaled in the industry. This is the type of platform that it would take months, possibly years, and a team of systems engineers and developers to perfect; and that is the argument I make.