CenturyLink, Inc. launched CenturyLink Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) with Managed Cloudera, a new managed service offering that combines CenturyLink's expertise in data and advanced analytics, network, cloud and application services with the highly secure Apache Hadoop-based data management and analytics platform from Cloudera. This managed service delivers data integration and analytics consulting to help customers deliver use cases for increasing sales, streamlining operations, improving customer engagement and gaining competitive advantage. Many organizations lack the in-house resources, expertise and strategy needed to successfully leverage their big data, especially as the Internet of Things (IoT) places more demands on their IT infrastructure. CenturyLink BDaaS, led by specialized consulting from the company's team of big data experts, delivers a comprehensive managed service backed by infrastructure that can handle data-intensive workloads, including surges. This enables rapid analysis of large and complex data sets. CenturyLink BDaaS is enhanced by adding data and advanced analytics consulting services supported by a deep bench of Cloudera-certified data scientists and Cloudera Hadoop solution administrators, developers and architects. The solution, bolstered by CenturyLink's global high-speed network connectivity, provides storage, processing, and management components deployed on CenturyLink Cloud Bare Metal servers. The bare metal private cloud environments, which allow customers to achieve faster time-to-market, improved data protection and rapid public cloud scalability at a lower cost, have been certified by Cloudera as an architecture that meets its rigorous criteria for ensuring optimal performance and efficiency. CenturyLink's BDaaS includes: A comprehensive quick start program – To help align with customers' objectives and create customized solutions, CenturyLink offers specialized workshops that can span anywhere from one day to two weeks, based on customer objectives. These guided sessions are designed to determine use cases and conduct needs assessments. Real-time deployment support – Organizations can quickly deploy projects in a proof of concept, then scale into production. CenturyLink engineers offer assistance building data platforms for identified use cases including areas such as data ingest, storage, and access methodologies.