accelerating time to success for your big data initiatives

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Accelerating Time-to-Success for Your Big Data Initiatives BROCHURE

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Accelerating Time-to-Success for Your Big Data Initiatives

BROCHURE

Accelerating Time-to-Success for Your Big Data Initiatives2

Big data has gone mainstream. Everywhere you look, people

are talking about how to unlock value from the massive, ever-

growing volumes of information residing within and beyond

traditional data repositories.

And it’s not just talk. According to a Forrester Consulting survey,

61 percent of IT decision-makers are leveraging Hadoop in proof-

of-concept (POC) or production environments — and another

20 percent are planning to.1 Why are big data projects front

and center? Because by improving decision-making, they can

profoundly impact nearly every aspect of your business, from

operational efficiencies and product development to customer

interactions and management processes.

Imagine, for example, if you could identify patterns that enable

you to predict — and ultimately avoid — manufacturing line

and shipment delivery problems. Or if you could increase sales

through a recommendation engine for online purchases that

factors in everything from purchase history to demographic

patterns in real-time, and instantly presents tailored product

options and pricing. Or if by applying a big data approach to

marketing campaign analysis, you could optimize margins

across channels.

The use cases are far-reaching. In addition to the examples

above, big data practices are commonly applied to data lake/data

refinery projects, risk, fraud and compliance applications. They’re

also ideal for improving customer churn and experience, better

understanding of consumer sentiment and social listening, as

well as for machine-generated data analyses.

Complexities Inherent in Big Data Implementations

Although envisioning how big data projects can benefit your business is relatively easy, making them happen is anything but. The

challenges become evident as soon as you start the process and only get more complex over time. Consider what you need to factor

into your plans:

Sizing and Budget: Building out a big data infrastructure — with the compute, storage, security and network bandwidth to handle

large, growing volumes of data — can be costly. How much infrastructure do you need? Should you prepare for a POC or a full-scale

implementation? What kind of growth do you anticipate? Do you have enough data center capacity and, if not, do you have the

budget to expand? And how will you mitigate the risk of technology obsolescence?

Three key variables will affect your infrastructure sizing requirements: use cases, data sources and data retention. If any of these

grow significantly in scope, you may find yourself scrambling to expand your system. But if all of them ramp quickly, the challenges

can be overwhelming.

1. Use cases: Once you start realizing success from your

initial project, chances are that business leaders across your

enterprise will want to leverage data-driven strategies —

and your environment — for a multitude of new use cases.

2. Data sources: The sources your company has been

analyzing are probably a small subset of what is available.

According to Forrester Research, most organizations are

analyzing only about 12 percent of their data2. To handle

more use cases, the number and type of data sources that

feed into your environment will most assuredly expand. IDC

predicts that the global universe of data will about double

every two years, reaching 40,000 exabytes or 40 trillion

gigabytes by 20203. Even if the data you analyze multiplies

at a fraction of this rate, it can quickly push the limits of

your infrastructure.

3. Data retention periods: Requirements around data retention

will change if the need for long-term trend analyses grows

or if government policies dictate that you retain certain

types of information, requiring data to be stored for many

more months and years.

v

Big Data Solution Evolution

Business Insight (Analytics) and Integration Services

Big Data Application Lifecycle Management

Big Data Foundation Services

Content Management eCommerce

Complementary CenturyLink Solutions & Services

CenturyLinkDatabase

as a Service

CenturyLinkDisaster Recovery

DATA INTEGRATION

The Seven Qualities of Production Systems Applied to Big Data

QUALITY WHAT IT MEANS

1 Experience Users’ perceptions of the usefulness, usability, and desirability of the application

2 Availability The readiness of the service or application to perform its functions when needed

3 Performance The speed to perform functions to meet business and user expectations

4 Scalability Handle increasing or decreasing volumes of transactions, services, and data

5 Adaptability The ease with which an application or service can be changed or extended

6 Security Supports the security properties of confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization, and nonrepudiation

7 Economy Minimize cost to build, operate, & change an application or service without compromising its business value

Performance: Your users must be able to access and analyze data from distant and disparate sources as though it were local. Having

sufficient compute power and an infrastructure sized to your application are critical for rapid analysis. In addition, the closer the data

center is to users, the better the performance. Is your infrastructure adequate and your data center close enough? Can your users

reliably access what they need when they need it?

Complimenting CenturyLink Solutions & Services

Accelerating Time-to-Success for Your Big Data Initiatives4

Timing: In this economy, every day you’re not applying big data

practices is a day you’re losing ground to competitors who are.

Your IT department may be able to stand up a test environment

in a few months, but you’ll likely have to go in the queue for

production development. And each time you need to change, you

may have to go back in the queue and wait out the procurement

cycle. How much time are you willing to let pass?

In-house Skills: Your existing IT team may be able to handle a

big data POC project. However, the skills required for production-

grade big data management and analysis are a different animal

altogether. Finding big data professionals to handle a production

initiative is far from easy. According to McKinsey & Co., demand

for those professionals in the U.S. alone will exceed the available

supply by 140,000 to 190,000 positions by 2018.4

Keep in mind that different tradeoffs may apply at different points

in your implementation cycle. For instance, if you’re focusing

on a new use case POC, you may only need to support a few

requirements using dummy data. In this case, your current

infrastructure and staff are probably sufficient. However, when

you move to production using real data, security is going to be

important, especially if the data is sensitive. If you are budget-

constrained, you may need to allocate more resources to

security measures than, say, compute. Likewise, use cases that

emerge down the road may require long-term storage while

others may be more dependent on real-time analysis where

retention is shorter, but performance — and therefore, compute

power, infrastructure size, data center location and bandwidth

— is critical. With all of these tradeoffs, the need to regularly

reassess and accommodate changing big data priorities adds to

an already complex picture.

Managed Services: The Rx for Big Data Initiatives

The reality is that most organizations don’t have the infrastructure, expertise, budget and/or desire to implement, effectively scale

and manage an enterprise-grade big data environment. Instead, many choose to partner with a big data managed services provider.

Here’s why:

• Time-to-market: The right partner can quickly provide the

infrastructure that best suits your implementation. As new

use cases come on board, they can be rapidly deployed and

put into production.

• Flexibility: You don’t have to worry about how to handle

changing priorities. Your partner should have the flexibility to

accommodate all those variables without the tradeoffs that

would be required if you were implementing and managing

your own big data environment. This includes rapidly scaling

up to accelerate results as well as the ability to scale down

as projects end, without suffering investment losses from

under-utilized infrastructure.

• Expertise: The big data experts you would be trying to hire

are already working at your managed services provider.

Right away, you can benefit from the knowledge and

experience they’ve gained from a wide range of big data

projects for clients of all shapes and sizes.

• Simplicity: By going with a managed services provider for

big data, you strip away the complexity. Instead of being

distracted by infrastructure deployment and management

issues, you are freed up to focus on higher-level priorities

and applying data-driven strategies to your business.

The CenturyLink Advantage

CenturyLink enables you to optimize management of your data assets so you can make better decisions in real-time. Our offerings

are designed to provide everything enterprises need to conceptualize, implement and scale a world-class big data solution. With more

than 26 petabytes of information under management for enterprise clients and more than 30 percent of the Fortune 500 running on

our platforms, CenturyLink has the technology and expertise required to turn your data into a strategic advantage.

Suite of Big Data SolutionsOur solutions are headlined by CenturyLink Big Data Foundation Services, which combine CenturyLink’s mature global infrastructure

and network connectivity with proven big data software in a fully hosted and managed service. Designed to optimize storage,

integration, retrieval and analysis of all your structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, Big Data Foundation Services includes:

• Cloudera Manager for complete management of the

Hadoop platform. This is where the client components that

interact with the cluster are installed and tools for ingesting

data into the cluster are loaded.

• Enterprise-grade infrastructure as a service, including high-

bandwidth network connectivity with built-in redundancy for

extra reliability; scalability enabled by CenturyLink’s more

than 60 data centers and global Tier 1 MPLS network; as

well as robust security across data center, network and

application layers.

• Flexibility to integrate analytics capabilities and custom

application development as part of a custom solution.

• CenturyLink’s Cognilytics solution brings highly sought after

data implementation and analytical services for big data

applications like Hadoop and SAP HANA. Advanced analytics

capabilities include Model Controller to design, develop and

deploy models, Decision Analyzer to produce analytics, and

Navigator for data visualization.

To round out the CenturyLink big data solution set, we will phase application lifecycle management services into our core offering. The

services will cover all aspects, from specification, development and QA through application deployment and ongoing enhancement.

Enterprise-grade Infrastructure When it comes to big data projects, infrastructure can mean the difference between success and failure. When you consider the

enormous and ever-growing volumes of data that organizations need to store, access, integrate and analyze, the importance of a

scalable, always-on, high-performing and secure global infrastructure is paramount. CenturyLink has been providing high-performing,

ultra-secure infrastructure for complex applications for more than 15 years.

• Scalability: Our computing infrastructure is at the ready.

With CenturyLink, you never have to worry about compute,

storage, network or physical capacity. With our state-of-the-

art data centers, comprising more than two million square

feet of floor space, we can easily handle whatever you

need, whenever you need it. Elastic bandwidth enables you

to scale connectivity to efficiently handle increased usage,

and gives you the flexibility to scale down, conserving costs

when projects are completed.

Accelerating Time-to-Success for Your Big Data Initiatives6

• Availability and Reliability: CenturyLink’s infrastructure is

available 24/7, wherever your users are located. Data centers

across North America, Europe and Asia deliver 100% uptime

and connect to customer endpoints via CenturyLink’s

advanced Tier 1 IP network. Built on a Multi-Protocol Label

Switching (MPLS) backbone, it ensures fast reroute and core

redundancy, and provides superior reliability with less than

a 50-millisecond network recovery. With this network —

which carries more than 20% of the world’s Internet traffic

and has a global reach of 85 countries — all of your users

can readily access your big data environment. By running

your big data environment in a CenturyLink data center near

you, and by backing up data and additional instances of big

data applications in remote centers that can be instantly

accessed, you ensure business continuity in the event of

weather or power disruptions.

• Performance: With CenturyLink, proximity of data centers

to users is never an issue. Our global footprint is particularly

well-suited for multi-location companies whose users can

access our local data centers. To effectively handle huge

quantities of structured (e.g., relational databases), semi-

structured (e.g., XML files) and unstructured (e.g., basic

text files) data and enable ultra-fast decision-making,

CenturyLink delivers high-bandwidth, low-latency network

connectivity. Our broad range of TDM and Ethernet access

options and bandwidth scale from 1.5MBps to 10Gbps —

ensuring high performance for any data requirements.

Moreover, Tier 1 connectivity results in superior speed so your

users are served content more quickly.

• Security & Compliance: According to IDC, only about half

the information in the digital universe that needs protection

has protection, and the amount of unprotected data will

grow by a factor of 26 to more than 40 percent in 20205.

To ensure your data is protected and can’t be accessed by

unauthorized users, we provide advanced security at the

physical data center, network and application levels.

To meet the needs of customers in industries with strict regulatory requirements, we provide an environment that enables faster

compliance. For instance, we are compliant with SSAE 16 service controls, and publically traded and ecommerce companies that rely on

our infrastructure to address SOX and PCI standards. Likewise, financial services and healthcare provider organizations have the controls

to meet FISMA and HIPAA requirements.

Big Data Ecosystem CenturyLink puts your big data environment in context of your broader IT ecosystem. Whether you need an Oracle data warehouse

for your data, analytics to aid decision-making, or want to tie in with ecommerce, SAP or more comprehensive disaster recovery

applications — we can integrate all, or any mix of, these complementary solutions.

Global Headquarters Monroe, LA (800) 728-8471

EMEA Headquarters United Kingdom +44 (0)118 322 6000

Asia Pacific Headquarters Singapore +65 6591 8824

Canada Headquarters Toronto, ON 1-877-387-3764

About CenturyLink Business

CenturyLink, Inc. is the third largest telecommunications

company in the United States. Headquartered in Monroe, LA,

CenturyLink is an S&P 500 company and is included among the

Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations. CenturyLink

Business delivers innovative private and public networking and

managed services for global businesses on virtual, dedicated

and colocation platforms. It is a global leader in data and voice

networks, cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for

enterprise business customers.

For more information visit www.centurylink.com/enterprise.

©2015 CenturyLink. All Rights Reserved. The CenturyLink mark, pathways logo and certain CenturyLink product names are the property of CenturyLink. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Services not available everywhere. Business customers only. CenturyLink may change or cancel services or substitute similar services at its sole discretion without notice.31020714-2

1Big Momentum for Big Data, January 2014, Forrester Consulting on behalf of CenturyLink2Forrsights Strategy Spotlight BI and Big Data, Q4 2012, Forrester Research3The Digital Universe in 2020, December 2012, IDC4Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity, McKinsey & Company, May 20115The Digital Universe in 2020, December 2012, IDC

Proven Managed Services Our top-rated managed services underpin all of our big data offerings. As evidenced by our leader position in Gartner’s Managed Hosting

Magic Quadrant, ISO compliance and ITIL-based managed services, CenturyLink has earned a reputation for effectively handling extremely

complex enterprise needs. Our big data and hosting experts can guide you every step of the way — or at any point in the cycle — to

ensure you get maximum value from your big data initiative. Clients rely on us for everything from use case planning and business case

development, to environment planning and deployment, to complete management of the infrastructure, Hadoop and other big data

application environments.

When you partner with CenturyLink for big data solutions, you’re setting the foundation for long-term success:

• Innovation: Deploy new data-driven strategies and innovate

compelling new products, services and capabilities by extracting

strategic insights from constantly growing data volumes.

• Speed: Realize results sooner by compressing big data

project implementation time, quickly scaling use cases and

range of data sources, and easily extending and integrating

your existing information management capabilities into

CenturyLink big data solutions.

• Reduced Risk: Avoid the technology obsolescence that’s

inherent in this highly dynamic market and the capacity

issues that can stall in-house big data projects. Control

expenses with predictable cost models that can flex with

your business. Ensure continuity of mission-critical operations

with a highly available, secure and scalable solution that

leverages CenturyLink’s proven expertise in managing

information and systems for the world’s largest companies.

CenturyLink enables you to unlock the value of all your big data assets, fast. No matter where you are in your implementation process,

how quickly you need to add use cases and data sources, or where your users reside, we’ll get your big data project where it needs to

be, so you can focus on innovating your business and staying ahead of the competition through effective data-driven strategies.

WHAT MAKES CENTURYLINK DIFFERENT?• Infrastructure expertise

• Proven ITIL-based managed services approach

• Implementation flexibility

• CenturyLink / CTL network

• Commercial model to support production implementations

• Complementing products and solutions

Accelerating Time-to-Success for Your Big Data Initiatives8

For more information about CenturyLink Business, visit www.centurylink.com/enterprise.

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