Databricks: Apache Spark Outgrowing Hadoop

The number of standalone deployments of Spark eclipses those on YARN as more users run Spark independent of Hadoop, according to a newly published survey of Spark users conducted by Databricks, the company founded by the creators of Apache Spark.

Databricks said that users that are running Spark in standalone (48 percent of respondents) exceeds those running Spark on YARN (40 percent of respondents), alongside a majority of users running Spark in the public cloud. The survey also found that 51 percent of respondents run Spark on a public cloud.

Key findings from the survey include:

• Spark is outgrowing Hadoop: The most common Spark deployments according to the community are: 48 percent standalone, 40 percent YARN within Hadoop and 11 percent Apache Mesos. Spark users who do not use any Hadoop components have more than doubled in 2015 (from 2014). 
• Streaming and advanced analytics uses rising: Spark is being used for an increasingly diverse set of applications, particularly data scientists for machine learning, streaming and graph analysis use cases. In 2015, there are 56 percent more Spark streaming users than in 2014. The production use of advanced analytics, like MLib for machine learning and GraphX for graph processing, increased from 11 percent in 2014 to 15 percent in 2015. 75 percent of Spark users are also using two or more Spark components (51 percent of Spark users are using three or more Spark components).
• Spark users are becoming more diverse:  Of those surveyed, 41 percent identified themselves as Data Engineers, while 22 percent of respondents identified themselves as Data Scientists. Spark users are solving a variety of problems in different languages -- Scala (71 percent), Python (58 percent), SQL (36 percent), Java (31 percent) and R (18 percent) -- and all within the same framework.
• Spark's most popular use cases come to light: Fifty-two percent use Spark for data warehousing, 68 percent use it for business intelligence, 40 percent for processing application and system logs, 48 percent to build recommendation engines, 36 percent for user-facing services and 29 percent for fraud detection and security.
• Spark is increasing access to big data:  Ninety one percent of those surveyed claim performance as their reason for adoption, while 77 percent cite ease of programming, 71 percent cite ease of deployment, 64 percent cite advanced analytics capabilities and 52 percent cite real-time streaming capabilities.

"The continued growth of Spark has been highly encouraging, as companies are going into production to obtain real business value, and they are doing so in a wide range of environments beyond Hadoop clusters," said Matei Zaharia, creator of Apache Spark and CTO of Databricks. "Databricks and our partners are 100 percent committed to the long-term growth of Spark and we'll continue to make improvements based on this survey data and our ongoing community feedback, to make the most complete big data analytics toolkit accessible to all businesses."

https://databricks.com

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NTT Com's Global IP Net Exceeds 1 Tbps on Japan-US Route

The Japan-U.S. capacity of NTT Communications' Tier-1 Global IP Network has been expanded past 1 Tbps for the first time.

NTT Communications said the expanded capacity will allow the network to support demand that is expected to double over the next two years, driven by the rapidly growing number of Internet users on smartphones and tablets and the growing adoption of broadband. Increasing use of music and video streaming, high-resolution images and 4K data are also boosting capacity needs.

http://www.ntt.com/aboutus_e/news/data/20150924_2.html

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Eurotunnel Installs ALU's 1830 Photonic Service Switch

Eurotunnel will converge all of its operational communications services and applications onto a single data network powered by Alcatel-Lucent's optical transport technology.

Alcatel-Lucent will deploy a new optical network in the 50km North and South tunnels of the Channel Tunnel using its 1830 Photonic Service Switch (1830 PSS) platform with network management provided by the 5620 Service Aware Manger.  The new network will connect the existing synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) optical network across both sides of the Channel Tunnel as well as new ‘mission-critical’ operational services. Communications traffic will include CCTV, Voice over IP (VoIP), back-office applications, billing, reporting, scheduling, traffic management and signalling functions.  Alcatel-Lucent has previously worked with Eurotunnel, including the deployment of mobile technology allowing passengers to connect to the Internet over their mobile devices while travelling through the tunnel beneath the English Channel.

https://www.alcatel-lucent.com

• The Channel Tunnel has the longest undersea portion of any tunnel in the world, which is used by Eurostar passenger train services and the Le Shuttle car and freight trains which transport nearly 2.6 million cars and 1.5 million trucks between the UK and France each year. In 2014 more than 21 million passengers, on all services, traveled through the Channel Tunnel.

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Optus Extends 100G from Cairns to Perth

Alcatel-Lucent has upgraded Optus’ Australian optical network between Cairns and Perth using its 1830 Photonic Service Switch and Photonic Service Engine (PSE)-based coherent technology with soft-decision forward error correction (SD-FEC). The network now delivers 100G wavelengths, ten times the previous capacity.

"Optus is committed to building reliable network capacity for retail, government and enterprise customers based on the world’s best long-haul transmission technology. This upgrade supports the changing needs of our customers including increasing capacity demands across Optus’ Wholesale and branded business lines alike," said Rob Parcell, Managing Director Optus Wholesale, Satellite and SMB.

https://media.optus.com.au

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Zscaler Lands Investment from Google Capital

Zscaler announced a continuation of its oversubscribed Series D round from Google Capital. This latest round of financing brings the company's total funding raised in the Series D to $110 million.

"We are joining forces with Google Capital to help millions of organizations around the world securely adopt cloud computing, mobility and the Internet of Things," said Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler. "Our new partnerships will further empower Zscaler to invest in our technology platform and grow our worldwide operations to meet ever increasing demand."

http://www.zscalar.com

Zscaler Raises $100 Million for Security-as-a-Service

Monday, August 03, 2015  Funding, Silicon Valley, Start-ups, Zscalar  No comments

Zscaler, a start-up based in San Jose, California, raised $100 million in new venture funding for its Internet security-as-a-service offering.

Zscaler currently protects more than 5,000 enterprise and government organizations worldwide with a total of 13 million employees against cyber attacks and data breaches. The cloud-based Zscaler Security-as-a-Service platform is operating in more than 100 data centers around the world, delivering carrier-grade Internet security, advanced persistent threat (APT) protection, data loss prevention, SSL decryption, traffic shaping, policy management and threat intelligence without the need for on-premise hardware, appliances or software.

TPG invested in Zscaler, alongside existing investors EMC and Lightspeed Ventures, who also contributed to the round.

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Blue Jeans Closes $76.5 Million for Cloud Video Conferencing

Blue Jeans Network, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, secured $76.5 million in new funding for its cloud-based video collaboration services.

Blue Jeans first launched its video as a service in 2011, proving a cloud-based way to connect business video conference room systems like Cisco and Polycom with consumer desktop and mobile solutions like Skype and Google. The solution does not require video bridging hardware (MCUs).

Earlier this year, Blue Jeansreleased its second major product line, a large-scale interactive events and experience service called Blue Jeans Primetime. Blue Jeans Primetime extends Blue Jeans' interactive video conferencing with new streaming capabilities to broadcast events to a worldwide audience, and includes the unique ability for the moderator to switch participant roles between active participant and passive observer, making it possible for speakers and their audiences to interact in brand new ways.

The company cites record growth for the fourth straight year, including bookings (ARR), revenues, subscribers, meetings, minutes, participants and more. Blue Jeans said it has at least doubled, tripled, or quadrupled each of these metrics year-over-year, every year since it launched its service in 2011.  The new Blue Jeans Primetime is being used by customers for all-hands meetings, large training sessions, and marketing events. There are also new market opportunities in media, entertainment, and sports for early adopters like TED, The Sundance Film Festival, and The Players' Tribune.

The new funding was led by NEA with participation from previous investors Accel, Battery Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners, and new investors Glynn Capital, Quadrille Capital, and Derek Jeter among others. This brings the total overall financing for Blue Jeans to $175 million.

"Despite all the advances in modern technology, the human face is still the most powerful tool for business," said Krish Ramakrishnan, CEO Blue Jeans Network. "As organizations have become more geographically dispersed, the need for video has become more critical than ever to establish and maintain meaningful connections, foster empathy and understanding, and improve communications. Our customers improve their productivity, save time and money, and build better relationships with Blue Jeans. We are so proud of how far we've come in a few short years, but we are not done yet. With this investment we are fueling up our tanks and preparing to step on the gas."

https://bluejeans.com/press-releases/blue-jeans-network-closes-investment-to-fuel-global-growth-power-new-era-of-video-collaboration

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Entel Chile Combines 2600 MHz and 700 MHz for 250 Mbps

Entel Chile has tested an end-to-end LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) Carrier Aggregation (CA) implementation supporting data speeds up to 250 Mbps.

The demonstration took place in September 22 and was performed using Ericsson Networks Software 14A on both 2600 MHz and APT700 MHz spectrum bands on a commercial network, using a commercial terminal. Entel is the first operator in Latin America to test 250 Mbps speed in a commercial LTE network.

Ericsson is a long-term supplier to Entel.

"This demo places Entel on the very limited list of operators in the world to demonstrate LTE-A in a live network using a commercial terminal. We are very proud to have partnered with Entel in this achievement, further extending our long-standing relationship," stated Nicolas Brancoli, Vice President of Ericsson Latin America.

http://www.ericsson.com
http://informacioncorporativa.entel.cl/comunicados-de-prensa/posts/entel-realiza-la-primera-conexion-con-tecnologia-lte-advanced-de-latinoamerica

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Ericsson and Qualcomm Demo LTE-U at 300 Mbps

Ericsson and Qualcomm conducted a demonstration of LTE-U at last week's PT/Expo Comm China 2015. The companies combined one 20 MHz licensed component carrier (CC) with one 20 MHz CC running on 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum over the air to deliver a peak throughput of up to 300 Mbps, using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor with X12 LTE.

The demonstration at PT/Expo Comm China 2015 used an RBS 6402 indoor picocell radio base station with multi-standard, multi-band capabilities and Wi-Fi support. It is designed for  buildings up to 5000 square meter in size.

http://www.ericsson.com
http://www.qualcomm.com

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