One of the global innovation strategies employed by EMC is the creation of local research partnerships at every geographic location. These partnerships include local government initiatives, university research partnerships, dialogues with startups, etc. The most recent example of this approach was on display at the recent Innovation Conference I attended in Israel.
My job is to oversee this activity in all geographies. It is a big task (which is why I use an innovation analytics approach).
In other words, I get to watch my global co-workers have all the fun.
Fortunately for me, I’ve had a front row seat to this type of activity here in Massachusetts. In May of this year I attended the Governor’s kickoff of the Massachusetts Big Data initiative. Part of that initiative includes EMC’s founding membership in bigdata@CSAIL. Several of my co-workers and I have already visited CSAIL and received a faculty overview of their Big Data research projects.
In addition to monitoring the global scene, I’m also happy to be contributing as well.
The governor’s Big Data initiative took another step this week with the announcement of a cool Massachusetts program known as hack/reduce.
Hack/reduce is first and foremost a computing center. The computing center has the capacity to house up to 150 computer engineers and data scientists. The state of Massachusetts is kicking in $50K to support the center, which will provide free office space and computing resources. A great write-up on this initiative can be found in the Boston Globe.
The center will certainly serve as an incubator for the region:
“While hack/reduce, which is named after the data programming model MapReduce, will function in many ways like an incubator program, it will not take an ownership stake in successful start-ups in exchange for participating in the program. Lalonde and Lynch have set up the program as a nonprofit organization.
And it will also become a data laboratory of sorts. Some of its backers, such as the state of Massachusetts, are expected to provide the center with data sets that it participants can use to test their new software tools.
‘What hack/reduce is about is building a community where people who want to work on these challenging data problems can get together,’ said Samuel Madden, a professor specializing in database management at MIT. Madden is also a hack/reduce adviser along with Steve Papa, former chief executive of Endeca Technologies Inc., which was sold to Oracle last year for $1.075 billion.”
More detail on hack/reduce can be found here.
How does one apply to become part of the center? Chris Lynch explains (courtesy of the Globe article):
“For big data you really need access to the latest and greatest technology. The idea is that we’ll provide these things for the best and brightest technology thinkers,” hack/reduce cofounder Chris Lynch said. Lynch is a partner with the Cambridge venture capital firm Atlas Venture and former chief executive of Vertica Systems, a database management company that Hewlett-Packard bought last year for $350 million.
The new center is housed inside the old Kendall Boiler and Tank Co. building on Third Street in Kendall Square and already has its first tenant: Sqrrl Data Inc., a freshly minted start-up that moved from Washington, D.C., to be part of the Cambridge program. Lynch said he is reviewing applications from other entrepreneurs and scientists applying for the center, which will provide free office space and computing resources.”
Steve,
If one thing is clear from all of your travels, innovation isn’t constrained to Silicon Valley. The hack/reduce space and group of big data startups is an exciting development for the Boston area. We captured a bunch of interviews from the launch including Governor Deval Patrick, startups and VCs: http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/Hack/reduce_Launch
Cheers,
Stu Miniman
http://wikibon.org/bigdata