This document discusses why Hadoop is important to learn. It predicts that by 2020 there will be 40 zettabytes of data in the world and big data is being used by companies like Amazon, Twitter, and stock markets. Hadoop allows for the use of big data by being fast, flexible, scalable, cost effective and fault tolerant. The document outlines career paths working with Hadoop and that 2015 will see further adoption by enterprises and emergence of Hadoop distributions from companies like IBM. It concludes by answering that it is the right time to learn Hadoop due to its proven worth, growing adoption, disappearing skills shortage, and job opportunities.