Udacity is proud to launch our Data Science and Big Data track — the first course, Intro to Hadoop and MapReduce, is available now! Together with industry partner Cloudera, we’ve created a great introduction to thinking about big data, Hadoop and MapReduce.

Sarah Sproehnle, VP of Educational Services at Cloudera — and your course instructor for Intro to Hadoop and MapReduce — reflects on the course below.

Learning MapReduce: Everywhere and For Everyone

Tom White, author of Hadoop: The Definitive Guide, recently celebrated his five-year anniversary at Cloudera with a blog post reflecting on the early days of Big Data and what has changed and remained since 2008. Having just seen Tom in New York at the biggest and best Hadoop World to date, I’m struck by the poignancy of his earliest memories. Even then, Cloudera’s projects were focused on broadening adoption and building the community by writing effective training material, integrating with other systems, and building on the core open source. The founding team had a vision to make Apache Hadoop the focal point of an accessible, powerful, enterprise-ready Big Data platform.

Today, Cloudera is working harder than ever to help companies deploy Hadoop as part of an Enterprise Data Hub. We’re just as committed to a healthy and vibrant open-source community, have a lively partner ecosystem over 700, and have contributed innovations that make data access and analysis faster, more secure, more relevant, and, ultimately, more profitable.

However, with all these successes in driving Hadoop towards the mainstream and providing a new and dynamic data engine, the fact remains that broadening adoption at the end-user level remains job one.  Even as Cloudera unifies the Big Data stack, the availability of talent to drive operations and derive full value from massive data falls well short of the enormous demand.  As more companies across industries adopt Hadoop and build out their Big Data strategies focused on the Enterprise Data Hub, Cloudera has expanded its commitment to educating technologists of all backgrounds on Hadoop, its applications, and its systems.

A Partnership to Cultivate Hadoop Talent

We at Cloudera University are proud to announce a new partnership with Udacity, a leader in open, online professional education. We believe in Udacity’s vision to democratize professional development by making technical training affordable and accessible to everyone, and this model will enable us to reach aspiring Big Data practitioners around the world who want to expand their skills into Hadoop.

Our first Udacity course, Introduction to Hadoop and MapReduce, guides learners from an understanding of Big Data to the basics of Hadoop, all the way through writing your first MapReduce program. We partnered directly with Udacity’s development team to build the most engaging online Hadoop course available, including demonstrative instruction, interactive quizzes, an interview with Hadoop co-founder Doug Cutting, and a hands-on project using live data. Most importantly, the lessons are self-paced, open, and based on Cloudera’s insights into industry best practices and professional requirements.

As a leader in Big Data training, Cloudera University is dedicated to preparing technology professionals to take on new jobs in the growing data economy. Our partnership with Udacity is important because it places Hadoop, Big Data, and data science in the context of skills that are essential to a modern technical education. Udacity’s focus on career-centric learning in science, technology, engineering, and math aligns to our goal of engaging true professionals to speed their entry into Big Data roles and satisfy the worldwide demand for talent.

Introduction to Hadoop and MapReduce is an excellent precursor to Cloudera University’s learning paths for Hadoop developers and administrators and is a complement to the Cloudera Essentials Training for Apache Hadoop video series that covers Hadoop fundamentals from a management perspective. As learners work through the new Udacity course, we’re also pleased to offer free excerpts from Tom White’s Hadoop: The Definitive Guide to help them transition the knowledge to practical, task-oriented skills.

Education is key to Hadoop’s continued transition to the mainstream, and only a skilled workforce can push forward the vision of an Enterprise Data Hub for every company around the world. Together, Cloudera and Udacity are leveling the playing field, empowering anyone with the desire to succeed in the modern data economy, regardless of where they live or their background.

http://cloudera.com/content/cloudera/en/training/courses/udacity/mapreduce.html

Sarah Sproehnle is Cloudera’s Vice President of Educational Services.