Hadoop is breaking through in Big Data

Cloud and Big Data specialist Cloudera has announced the availability of its first developer kit, catering to Apache’s open source software framework Hadoop (CDH). Cloudera has been a champion of Hadoop development, and the kit is designed to help developers to build apps in Hadoop environments faster and more easily than ever before.

Hadoop was initially inspired by papers from Google outlining its approach to handling an avalanche of data, and has since become the de facto approach for storing, processing and analyzing hundreds of terabytes, and even petabytes of data. It’s certainly causing a stir in the industry, by making compute and analytics processes on very large amounts of data not just possible but even relatively simple.

The framework is being rapidly embraced by the enterprise for its ability to capture and manage Big Data, German service provider Deutsche Telekom embraced Big Data wholeheartedly with one of Europe’s largest Hadoop clusters, but the process of building and managing Hadoop environments remains complicated and time-consuming for many developers without specialised training.

In a bid to help organisations unlock the value of their data for actionable insights and competitive advantage, the kit includes a collection of API libraries, tools, example code and documentation that help simplify the most common tasks when working with Apache Hadoop.

“At Cloudera we are not just Hadoop providers; we’re also consumers who know first-hand the challenges developers can face when working with Hadoop,” said Eric Sammer, engineering manager, Cloudera. “The new Cloudera Development Kit is one of the many ways we’re sharing our deep expertise with the community. First-time Hadoop programmers will find that CDK walks them through each step of the process, enabling them to get up and running on the platform quickly, while more-experienced developers will appreciate the flexibility of CDK to swap out different components for a completely customized experience. By making Hadoop more accessible, we are excited to help an even broader range of organizations get more value out of their data.”

https://github.com/cloudera/cdk

Brian Fitzpatrick, Vodafone’s incoming head of Group Carrier Services

Mobile operator group Vodafone has announced that telecommunications services provider ACN Europe’s CEO Brian Fitzpatrick will join the firm as group carrier services director.

Fitzpatrick will assume the role on May 7, 2013, reporting to Nick Jeffery, group enterprise director.

At ACN Europe Fitzpatrick has been responsible for operations in 18 countries. Prior to that, from 2005 to 2011, he was managing director of BT Wholesale Markets. Before that he was president of worldwide commercial operations at wholesale voice, data, IP and mobile signalling services provider Teleglobe International.

“Brian has an outstanding track record of running international businesses with a focus on delivering results,” said Jeffery.

“He brings with him extensive experience of the carrier services sector and I am delighted to welcome him to Vodafone.”

Telekom Austria has deployed a converged voice network using technology provided by Chinese kit vendor ZTE. The group has also built a commercial 100G transport network in Central and Eastern Europe

Operator group Telekom Austria has deployed a converged voice network to replace its existing mobile core for its northern operational markets in Austria, Slovenia and Liechtenstein.

Chinese kit vendor ZTE supplied Telekom with a circuit switched/IP multimedia subsystem (CS/IMS) converged voice network, which was implemented by local system integrator Kapsch CarrierCom.

The converged voice solutions provided to Telekom Austria Group are based on a cloud solution to help the operator reduce total cost of ownership. The IMS network will support various scenarios including RCSe and VoLTE and will help Telekom Austria to increase its network capacity and enable rapid growth of the operator’s customer base, according to ZTE.

“The new ZTE CS/IMS network opens up the future for Telekom Austria Group,” said Hans Pichler, CTO of Telekom Austria Group. “It will enable us to easily expand our business while giving our customers the best possible experience of the latest fixed and mobile communication services.”

The group has also built a commercial 100 gigabit transport network in Central and Eastern Europe, the first section of which, from Zagreb to Osijek and Ilok in Croatia, is already in operation. The network is being built to satisfy the ever increasing demand for high-speed services in Central and Eastern Europe and to meet customer demands even more effectively in the region.

“With this important technology upgrade the Telekom Austria Group will be able to offer redundant high speed data highways to all major cities in the CEE area,” said Darko Parun, project leader and director of group access and transport at Telekom Austria Group.

Vipnet, the Croatian subsidiary of the Telekom Austria Group, has already implemented a 100G transmission capacity by upgrading the transmission capacities, based on the existing Alcatel-Lucent 100G platform. The group said that the upgrade allows a tenfold increase in capacity on its Croatian network. It added that throughout its entire network footprint, capacities will be expanded to 100G.

By the end of the 2Q13, the route between Frankfurt, Germany and Sofia, Bulgaria will see the first 100G services operational. Throughout the remainder of 2013 Vienna, Belgrade, Zagreb, Bucharest, Budapest, Ivancice and Salzburg will also be connected with 100G networks.

The WDM and Next Generation Optical Networking event takes place in Monaco, 17th – 20th June. For more information click here.

Amazone is using Germany as a platform for European operations

Online powerhouse Amazon is stepping up its European cloud presence with the creation of a development centre in Germany. The new entity, based in Berlin and Dresden, will create 70 new engineering jobs and will focus on developing technologies to support the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing business, including hypervisors, operating systems, management tools and other applications as well as the development of machine learning technologies for use across all of Amazon’s platforms.

The cloud services pioneer will build its development centre out over the next 12 months and will use the operation as a jumping off point to help European businesses move to the cloud.

Amazon already has support for German companies in the form of account managers, solutions architects and technical support engineers. The development centre will add software development engineers who help create the building blocks of the cloud.

“We have always known that there is a wealth of technology talent across Germany and are looking for the most creative minds in the country to work on the next generation of technology behind our fast growing cloud computing business. Locating the development of key parts of the Amazon Web Services cloud in Germany speaks to the broad set of talent here and the investment we are making in the country,” said Ralf Herbrich managing co-director, Amazon Development Center Germany.

Cloud computing is the most important and sustainable revenue opportunity since voice, says Gallo

The good news for carriers is that cloud computing is the most important and sustainable revenue opportunity since voice. Not only that, by delivering next generation IT through the next generation network (NGN), carriers could become the leading channel in the cloud computing business, with unique competences and valuable assets.

Carriers are in a unique position to take some strong decisions about leading the cloud market so businesses will follow them – instead of following pure IT players which do not provide, as of today, a whole, end-to-end business solution.

Firstly, we need to forget talking about the ‘classical’ concepts of Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, or whatever new cloud deployment model someone might be thinking about right now. We need to start thinking about ‘Carrier Cloud’.

What is needed is a cloud concept where we do not consider technology silos or deployment model silos, but a concept where we think about services that will solve business needs for different customer segmentations and verticals. Essentially, it means there is no need to internally create or deploy cloud services. The Carrier Cloud concept refers to the capability of providing many state-of-the-art ‘actionable’ cloud services to customers, without the need to make huge investments in time and money, in order to make those cloud services available to customers.

Hide the Technical Complexities

In an economic environment where a recession is hitting all kinds of businesses and organisations hard, there is a strong and urgent need for new ways of doing things. And there is a demand for allowing businesses to focus on their core business, and outsource IT and even business processes.

To solve this issue, carriers can create their own cloud services offering and marketplace for their customers, and populate them with third-party services, often with degrees of customisation for each carrier. However, the services are ultimately provisioned by different service providers.

That is the same way carriers have succeeded in their respective markets for many years; hiding technical complexities from customers as much as possible and delivering service guarantee and quality. And all of that at a monthly fee from the lowest level consumer with a pre-paid mobile phone, to the largest organisations. Furthermore, designing services offerings for each customer segment or business vertical, not a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

For a carrier, it takes an average of 12 to 18 months to create and deploy a new service if deployed from scratch. In a carrier cloud model, new services (several of them at the same time) can be deployed in as quickly as six weeks, with minimum investments (CAPEX) and almost no ongoing maintenance costs (OPEX).

Most of the leading services will be coming from specialised third parties with the added value provided by the carrier. These include features such as single point of purchasing, monthly fees, single monthly invoices, end-to-end SLAs, end-to-end security, full carrier infrastructure availability and carrier customer care services.

Telefonica’s Aplicateca

One early example of a carrier cloud solution is Telefonica’s Aplicateca business applications store for SMEs, provided by NEC. It’s a globally scalable cloud service that provides additional ‘Over the Top’ revenues. This multi-tenancy platform allows multiple business customers to subscribe to and use a variety of applications and services on the same infrastructure. Those customers can access all of the applications and services they wish by using just one window.

Since the launch of Aplicateca, end users have been eagerly utilising a variety of applications such as CRM, billing, video-conferencing, GPS tracking and fleet management applications at low monthly fees. And they have enjoyed finding their requests for new applications being addressed quickly. It has evolved into a strategic channel to quickly launch and commercialise Telefonica and its parties’ services for SMEs with an end-to-end support scheme.

Telefonica has already launched Aplicateca service in Spain, Argentina and other markets with a strategic goal to continue deploying this business model in the medium term in the most relevant operators and markets where Telefonica is present.

Enhancing the IT Department

But whose responsibility is it, when it comes to getting the best out of the cloud? Can the enterprise IT manager basically sit back and let the cloud service provider take care of everything? Or do they then risk taking their eyes off the ball and perhaps even the possibility of becoming redundant?

It’s the service provider that should provide it. IT managers will have to manage the service, not the resources, delivery process etc.  IT managers will be much more business oriented, and will be able to add more value from a business strategy perspective, helping to improve business processes instead of managing IT operations and resources.

In fact, this does not mean a reduction in IT resources at all, but rather it will enhance IT’s position within the organisation, allowing it to fully integrate with the business, strategy and business efficiencies. IT will become more relevant for the business and the IT productivity and efficiency will increase.

Manuel Gallo

But IT will no longer be the team of technicians who should make things happen, provide support to internal users and be the ones to blame for a system failure. IT will be more of a business technology consulting department, providing the right advice about how the technology can help the business, without the psychological barrier of ‘if I propose something, I will personally have to do it’. In this way, IT will become more powerful.

So far, cloud has been perceived as a property of the IT Industry. Some carriers are not diving fast enough into the cloud business. The notion has been that, even if the cloud is one of their biggest potential sources of revenue in the near future, it is always related to IT and that the carriers are not IT companies. This perception needs to change.

As soon as we all realise that cloud is not about IT, and instead on how to deliver IT services or how to allow for business process outsourcing (BPO) using existing Telco assets, the ‘real’ cloud will start to emerge.

When using a new smartphone, everybody is thinking much more about the smartphone vendor than about the services or the carrier infrastructure behind it. But it is the carriers that deliver millions of smartphones to the market every month – not Nokia, Apple, Sony, RIM, Samsung or other technology vendors.

Carriers made it possible for mobile phones and will make it possible for cloud services, taking the position they deserve in the cloud market: the leading position.

Manuel Gallo, Director of Strategy & Business Development – EMEA Cloud Competence Centre, NEC Europe Ltd.

Laguna believes users spend around 50 per cent of their working time on collaborative applications, highlighting the opportunities in the sector.

Connectivity issues and a large SMB base are just some of those differences and there is a lot of education still to take place in such markets.

He addresses the threat of operators becoming bit pipes but believes there is lots of value in operators consolidating data to create new business models.

Deep Thought

‘Big Data’ is one of those buzz phrases doing the rounds in the industry at the moment. It’s an adjacent topic to cloud but is being thrown around in much the same way, often prefixed by the question: “What are you doing about…?” Well, with the costs of storage plummeting, it’s becoming clear that the answer to that question is you should be storing everything.

At the Telco Cloud World Forum in London recently, Jeurgen Urbanski, chief technologist for big data and cloud at Deutsche Telekom, made an interesting point. He said many of the companies he’d been helping with their big data problem – that is to say, very large amounts of information to store and then process – were struggling because they either ran out of capacity or money for data storage.

The era of Big Data is so closely aligned with cloud because it benefits from the same adoption of commodity hardware and open source software that suddenly makes the storage (and processing) of very large amounts of data (think petabytes and petabytes ) possible.

In recent years, the cost of storage media has sunk so low that for first time in history it’s possible to store anything you want for as long as possible, economically speaking. But this development shifts the problem to being able to perform actions on those data in a technically plausible and cost effective manner.

It’s probably true that when any nascent market hits the mainstream, there is a considerable amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) injected by legacy vendors that have a lot to lose. But that’s where another staple of the cloud movement – open source software – is coming into play.

Doug Cutting, chief architect at cloud specialists Cloudera and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation, helped create Apache’s open source software framework Hadoop out of necessity as data from the web exploded, and grew far beyond the ability of traditional systems to handle it.

Consider those shows that seem to be on TV all the time about hoarders who are terrified of throwing anything away because there might be something, somewhere, under a stack of cycling magzines from the 1960s that is of value. Yet these people never get around to actually having their tat valued, or indeed doing anything with it. This is exactly the problem such a framework sets out to solve.

According to Cutting, Hadoop was initially inspired by papers from Google outlining its approach to handling an avalanche of data, and has since become the de facto approach for storing, processing and analyzing hundreds of terabytes, and even petabytes of data. It’s certainly causing a stir in the industry, by making compute and analytics processes on very large amounts of data not just possible but even relatively simple.

Deutsche Telekom, a tier one operator, calls Hadoop the “single most disruptive technology in the data complex”. By Apache’s declaration, Hadoop is 100 per cent open source, and instead of relying on expensive, proprietary hardware and different systems to store and process data, the framework enables distributed parallel processing of huge amounts of data across inexpensive, industry-standard servers that both store and process the data, and can scale without limits.

Urbanski is right to be excited by the possibilities here. “Big Data is an entirely new way to take advantage of the incredible volume of data and the increasing diversity and variety of data as well as the incredible velocity of data,” Urbanski said.

In today’s hyper-connected world more and more data is being created every day, but with tools like Hadoop no data is too big. With parallel processing of data sets, you can have hundreds of servers searching for just one answer. It’s pretty much the industry’s realisation of Douglas Adams’ city-sized supercomputer Deep Thought.

Even when different types of data have been stored in unrelated systems, Apache claims you can dump it all into your Hadoop cluster with no prior need for a schema. In other words, you don’t need to know how you intend to query your data before you store it. So the big breakthrough here is that businesses and organisations can now find value in data that was recently considered useless.

“Essentially it means you can store first, ask questions later,” says Urbanski.

This latter point is important. So much of what we talk about in this industry now focuses on being able to do things dynamically or on the fly, but it seems that there are plenty of lessons we could learn from the past, from these large scale archives of data if only we had the tools and, more importantly, the right questions to ask.

Deep Thought, of course, knew the answer but not the question. Indeed, the need to make sense of that data opens the door to another, more philosophical specialist player, because surely the big question now is: do you even know what to ask?

Vodafone has launched a cloud hosting service in Portugal that users can access via their TV screens

Operator group Vodafone has launched a cloud hosting service in Portugal that users can access via their TV screens.

The group claims to be the first mobile operator in Portugal to offer such a service for TV screens, adding that the launch reinforces its commitment to the convergence of telecommunications services.

The Vodafone Cloud service allows users to back up photos, videos, music, documents and other digital content from their mobile phone, tablet, PC or Mac. Users can view their photos on the TV screen individually, by album or in slideshow mode, and can choose the videos they want to display from a mosaic view.

The group is offering 20GB of free hosting, without users having to subscribe or pay registration fees. Customers willing to pay extra have the opportunity to increase their storage limit to 100GB.

The latest launch means Vodafone’s Cloud service, which was first launched in 2011,  is now available on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, PCs, Macs and TVs.