Since the emergence of Big Data, companies have been building solutions and watching the impact of new technology as it happens. And MapR Technologies, Inc. has been there since the beginning.

Dave Vellante, cohost of theCUBE from the SiliconANGLE Media team, sees the cycle coming full circle, from the first days of geeking out, through the influx of business and mainstreaming of Big Data, and back again.

In an interview with Jack Norris, CMO of MapR Technologies, Inc., at Spark Summit East 2016 at the New York Hilton Midtown in NYC, theCUBE cohosts Vellante and George Gilbert discussed MapR, Apache Spark, and Big Data.

Taking humans out of the loop

As decision-making becomes more automated, human decisions are being replaced by algorithms that take action based on real-time data streams. Norris gives examples from advertising and fraud detection, citing the Rubicon Project as an example of the drive toward full automation. Humans are still a necessity for set-up, but the supply and demand decision is automated, said Norris.

The importance of context

“The more data that you can apply to a problem, the more context, the better off you are,” Norris told Vellante and Gilbert, emphasizing the importance of a model that can recreate reality and take into account customer behavior patterns when making decisions as data arrives. This requires scale, speed and innovative techniques. “It’s not the biggest but the most agile that will win the race,” believes Norris.

MapR coordinates data streams

Making decisions as data arrives requires coordinating the streams of data. Norris described how MapR does this by streaming real-time data to the appropriate locations to do the right operations.

Spark added to on-demand training

MapR rolled out on-demand training a year ago and has now trained over 50,000 people on Hadoop and Big Data. Today it is announcing an expansion to include on-demand training and certification for Apache Spark.

99% customer retention

Norris is confident in MapR and foresees future growth. “The state of a business is best represented by their customers,” he told theCUBE, citing MapR’s 99% retention rate and high expansion rate as proof of its current strength.

“We are seeing significant investments and our customers are seeing for significant returns,” he said.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Spark Summit East 2016. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE