The massive influx of data, and role of technologies such as Apache Hadoop®, is well-established among enterprises, industries, and government institutions. But ever-increasing amounts of data and new use cases present new challenges and a need for faster and more malleable technologies. UC Berkeley’s AMPLab brings together academics and businesses to engage in dialogue and collaboration to develop the next generation of big data technologies. Pivotal is a sponsor of AMPLab, supporting UC Berkeley’s effort to connect the brightest minds who are innovating within the big data and data science sphere.
AMPLab—short for “Algorithms, Machines, and People”—aims to address a number of the greatest science and technology challenges posed by the big data deluge. It is developing new frameworks which address a wider range of data-related tasks, creating common standards for data schema to ease the collection and analysis of data sources, building more robust and rapid algorithms for analysis, and studying how crowdsourcing can enable large-scale data input and address tasks that do not lend themselves to machine learning.
Founded in 2011, AMPLab is helping drive research and the development of new, more rapid and effective technologies for managing and analyzing big data workloads. Projects and software that have emerged from AMPLab include Apache Spark, a fast engine for performing in-memory data processing, and Apache Mesos, an abstraction layer for fault-tolerant distributed systems. These projects and more have been turned over the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) for governance and further development, uniting the industry behind common standards and systems, and inspiring innovation among developers.
Pivotal’s sponsorship of AMPLab, and other open source organization like the ASF, Cloud Foundry Foundation, Open Data Platform initiative, Spring and the Linux Foundation, is not only a declaration of the company’s support of open source technologies, but an investment in the further development of big data technologies. Pivotal benefits from collaboration and an ongoing dialogue with open source researchers and developers, as well as access to the newest and most effective in-memory technologies. In addition, events such as the AMP Camp Conference and regular meetups foster dialogue between researchers, developers, and industry leaders. In addition, the support of doctoral candidates’ work creates more skilled practitioners in the field following graduation.
Editor’s Note: Apache, Apache Hadoop, Hadoop, Apache Mesos and Apache Spark are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries.
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