An anonymous reader writes: From the NYT:
"In 2000, the open-source operating system Linux was viewed askance in many corporations as an oddball creation and even legally risky to use, since the open-source ethos prefers sharing ideas rather than owning them. But IBM endorsed Linux and poured money and people into accelerating the adoption of the open-source operating system.
On Monday, IBM is to announce a broadly similar move in big data software. The company is placing a large investment — contributing software developers, technology and education programs — behind an open-source project for real-time data analysis, called Apache Spark.
The commitment, according to Robert Picciano, senior vice president for IBM’s data analytics business, will amount to “hundreds of millions of dollars” a year. ...................................
"IBM said it will put more than 3,500 of its developers and researchers to work on Spark-related projects. It will contribute machine-learning technology to the open-source project, and embed Spark in IBM’s data analysis and commerce software. IBM will also offer Spark as a service on its programming platform for cloud software development, Bluemix. The company will open a Spark technology center in San Francisco to pursue Spark-based innovations.
And IBM plans to partner with academic and private education organizations including UC Berkeley’s AMPLab, DataCamp, Galvanize and Big Data University to teach Spark to as many as 1 million data engineers and data scientists."