{"id":235473,"date":"2015-05-06T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/inside_microsoft_research\/2015\/05\/06\/collaborating-to-improve-efficiency-of-the-cloud-in-the-increasingly-connected-world-of-big-data\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T07:29:21","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:29:21","slug":"collaborating-to-improve-efficiency-of-the-cloud-in-the-increasingly-connected-world-of-big-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/blog\/collaborating-to-improve-efficiency-of-the-cloud-in-the-increasingly-connected-world-of-big-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Collaborating to improve efficiency of the cloud in the increasingly connected world of big data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by George Thomas Jr.<\/span><\/p>\n

\" (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>The cloud is getting crowded.<\/p>\n

As more and more devices connect to the Internet and more and more data flows to and from the cloud, the networking fabric once deemed sufficient to handle such traffic quickly is getting stretched.<\/p>\n

In 2013 alone, the total Internet bandwidth crossing international borders was 100 terabytes per second, according to TeleGeography's recent Global Internet Geography report (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

And even as fiber network capacity increases (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, so, too, will the volume of big data. The challenge of processing it quickly, securely and more cost-effectively remains.<\/p>\n

To address such challenges, Microsoft researchers joined collaborators from multiple universities this week at the annual USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Their goal: To recommend solutions that push the architectural boundaries of network services.<\/p>\n

\"The efficient management and operation of networks and data centers is Microsoft's core strength and priority,\" said Victor Bahl (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, a Microsoft distinguished scientist. \"These papers represent the best in systems research, a product of close collaboration between Microsoft researchers, engineers and our colleagues in academia, anticipating and taking care of important issues well before they become problems.\"<\/p>\n

Microsoft's many contributions to the conference include Geode (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> and Retro (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Geode (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> aims to reduce the cost of wide area bandwidth on a global scale. It's a collaboration between the University of Illinois (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, Microsoft researcher George Varghese (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, Carlo Curino, a senior scientist in Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise product division, and Thomas Jungblut, a software engineer with Skype (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Geode specifically targets the problem of wide-area analytics in the context of bandwidth usage of SQL data distributed globally, which they call Wide-Area Big Data (WABD).<\/p>\n

The expense of wide-area network bandwidth can drive applications to discard valuable data. It also can contribute to privacy concerns regarding raw data storage, depending on the laws or constraints governments may impose.<\/p>\n

However, with Geode, the researchers have solved the WABD issue by:<\/p>\n