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Press Release: September 18, 2014

Databricks and O'Reilly Media Launch First Apache Spark Developer Certification Program

With Demand for Apache Spark Exploding, Databricks and O'Reilly Media Offer Certification Standards for the Global Spark Developer Community

Berkeley, CA, September 18, 2014 — Databricks, the company founded by the creators of the popular open-source Big Data processing engine Apache Spark, and O'Reilly Media, the leading voice in Data Science, today announced the launch of the first, global Apache Spark Developer Certification program. Databricks' Spark experts and O'Reilly's editorial team are creating a program—consisting of a formal exam and subsequent certification—that establishes the industry standard for measuring and validating Spark technical expertise. As enterprises increasingly focus on turning data into value, Certified Spark developers can help them take advantage of Spark's combination of sophisticated analytics and blazing speed to deliver deeper insights, faster.

The Databricks/O'Reilly certification program augments Databricks' efforts to grow the Spark community and enable the ecosystem that is a critical component of all successful platforms. Recent Databricks initiatives have included the 'Certified on Spark' and 'Certified Spark Distribution' programs designed to ensure compatibility between Spark applications and distributions, a long-running and rapidly expanding training program, and events such as the Spark Summit which brought together over 1000 members of the community. The Databricks team, which spun out of UC Berkeley's AMPLab after creating Apache Spark, remains the major driving force behind Spark, and Databricks provides the expertise and backend support that powers enterprise Spark offerings from major Big Data vendors such as Cloudera, MapR, and Datastax.

While specific reasons for enterprise adoption of Spark vary—speed and efficiency, ease of use, single unified system for entire data pipelines—the uptake has been unmistakable. Spark is the most active project in the Big Data system, part of all major Hadoop vendors' distributions—as well as many non-Hadoop vendors—and has been deployed in production by enterprises across multiple verticals, including telecommunications, retail, financial services, public sector, and media companies.

"The adoption of Apache Spark by businesses large and small is growing at an incredible rate across a wide range of industries, and the demand for developers with certified expertise is quickly following suit," said John Tripier, Alliances and Ecosystem Lead at Databricks. "To meet that demand, in addition to our existing Spark training resources, we're excited to partner with O'Reilly in the launch of the Spark Developer Certification program to encourage and further grow the community of Spark developers building next-generation Big Data applications."

"O'Reilly has a rich history of working directly with the originators of technologies we believe in, and this new Spark Certification program continues that tradition," said Ben Lorica, O'Reilly's Director of Content for Data. "I'm delighted to be partnering with the creators of Spark to build a program that defines the state of the art and helps developers and companies keep pace with the latest innovations in the big data space."

Spark Developer Certification will formally launch and be available at O'Reilly's upcoming Strata Conference + Hadoop World in New York, October 15-17. For more information: http://oreilly.com/go/sparkcert

About Databricks:

Databricks was founded by the team that created and continues to drive Apache Spark, the most active open source project in the Big Data ecosystem. Databricks' vision is to dramatically simplify big data processing and free users to focus on turning data into value. Databricks Cloud, a cloud platform built around Apache Spark, delivers on this vision by combining the power of Spark with a zero-management hosted platform and an initial set of applications built around common workflows. Databricks is venture-backed by Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. For more information, visit http://www.databricks.com.

About O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its Safari learning platform, books, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

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