Mainframe to Hadoop no longer a bridge too far

Mainframes are a critical source of big data, generating and processing some of the largest data volumes for leading organisations, but high costs and a lack of the requisite skills mean that most of this data goes untapped. At the O’Reilly Strata conference in London, 11-13 November, big data specialist Syncsort will be on hand to help educate organisations as to how to address the fundamental technical, skills, and cost challenges associated with ingesting and processing mainframe data in Hadoop.

On Monday 11 November, Syncsort’s Director of Strategy Steve Totman will present alongside Matt Brandwein of Cloudera (1315hrs, Westminster Room, Hilton London Metropole). The session, How to leverage mainframe data with Hadoop: bridging the gap between Big Iron and Big Data, will explore common challenges encountered by organisations seeking to maximise the insight they can from their mainframe data using the Hadoop open-source software framework. Syncsort and Cloudera recently announced a technology partnership aimed at providing smarter deployment, administration, and monitoring for Big Data projects.

“So many organisations – including the top 25 global banks, nine of the top insurance providers, and 23 of the top 25 US retailers – are reliant on mainframe data, but mainframe storage costs can be as much as $100,000 per terabyte. Hadoop provides organisations with the opportunity to generate powerful insights by combining behavioural data with granular mainframe data, while also increasing business agility and reducing operational expenditure,” Totman said.

“Mainframe data powers mission-critical applications throughout the enterprise, and this data cannot be neglected – deploying mainframe data in Hadoop can create significant competitive advantage. However, exploiting this data is all but impossible without the right tools, requiring you to wrestle with thousands of lines of Java, Pig, Hive, and COBOL coding. Syncsort and Cloudera will present a painless and seamless approach to exploiting all your data, bridging the technical, skills, and cost gaps between mainframe and Hadoop,” he continued.

Also on 11 November (1900hrs, Bleinheim Suite, Hilton London Metropole), Syncsort will be curating a Hadoop Users Group meeting. The focus of the meeting will be on the evolution of Hadoop, collaboration between the open source community and proprietary technology vendors, and the impact on the next generation of data management solutions. In addition to presentations by Syncsort, Cloudera, and Spotify, there will be a panel discussion featuring Syncsort’s Steve Totman, Hadoop creator Doug Cutting of Cloudera, David Whiting from Spotify, and Splunk’s Brett Sheppard.