“Future is what we all believe in, thus invest always in the future” – Mr Imad Syed, PiLog. In an effort to accelerate its R&D collaboration with the ERIQ research center, the PiLog Group has provided access to a Cloudera Big Data Stack for researchers working on the project. The Cloudera distribution maintained by PiLog India is used by both ERIQ researchers and PiLog developers. Some of the aims include to learn how to overcome some of the challenges in migrating traditional RDBMS applications into the new HDFS environment, developing new applications to exploit the power of machine learning, while being encouraged to practice, play, learn, experiment and innovate solutions for the Big Data challenges.
Students are provided with an outline of practical business challenges with sample data to analyse and develop solutions that would make the world a better place to work and live. It has been observed that the students have been actively participating in developing the solutions for these challenges. Several smaller groups of ERIQ researchers, business analysts and PiLog developers in South Africa, India and Houston have formed to address specific problems of the Big Data world and bridge the gap between theoretical and practical perception of the business problems. They hold weekly conference calls to share progress and project updates. Some of the projects underway include cleaning and standardizing semi-structured international vendor data, entity and identity resolution, and new data quality applications for healthcare information.
PiLog has been generous in its support of ERIQ and the EIT College. In Fall 2018, the PiLog Academy created a scholarship fund currently supporting two of the student research assistants participating in the project. For some of the graduate assistants working on the project, this is their first experience working in the HDFS environment. “We are really excited and grateful to have this opportunity and to see what we can develop using these tools!” according to Marinda Huisamen, one of the student research assistants working on the project.
For more information about the active project and its members, see PiLog Master Data Management Research and Development on the Projects page.