Ross Wilkers
A new free training program from MapR Technologies launched in January for information technology administrators, developers and data analysts to obtain certifications for data distribution platform Apache Hadoop.
This program aims to help alleviate a skills shortage in the federal contracting arena, a public sector leader at MapR says.
Tom White, a senior director of business development at MapR, told ExecutiveBiz the Hadoop On-Demand Training program also aims to give contractors flexibility to have employees get certified in Hadoop on their own schedules.
“Federal contractors are under constant pressure to perform under ever tightening budgets. Providing Hadoop training at no cost removes at least some of this pressure,†White said.
Open source-based Hadoop first hit the market in December 2011 after six years of development and works to distribute large amounts of data contained in computer clusters.
Many agencies have since looked to Hadoop as a new means for data storage and real-time analytics due to their contstrained budgets, Mercedes Westcott of Cloudera told ExecutiveBiz in November 2014.
In that conversation, Cloudera’s public sector vice president also described Hadoop’s potential uses in data exploration and enterprise data warehouse optimization (click here to read our full conversation).
MapR — a San Jose, Calif.-based distributor of Hadoop software – estimates the training program to represent a $50 million in-kind contribution to the Hadoop community.
The company bases that estimate on a $1,750 valuation of each course and if 10,000 people take an average of three courses.
Also, a 451 Research analysis says the worldwide Hadoop market could reach $2.7 billion by 2018 but the firm cautioned this growth could be challenged if development and configuration skills in Hadoop do not expand throughout the IT industry.
“The demand for Hadoop is outpacing the market’s ability to support it. MapR is taking this challenge head-on by offering free on-demand training and those who complete the appropriate coursework have the option of becoming certified,” White told ExecutiveBiz.
“It’s a win for our partners and their customers,” he said.
