Cloudera Data Science Workbench connects to popular open source platforms

Cloudera, the provider of the global platform for machine learning and advanced analytics built on open source technologies, has unveiled Cloudera Data Science Workbench, a new self-service tool for data science on Cloudera Enterprise.

Based on the company's acquisition of data science startup Sense.io last year, Data Science Workbench allows data scientists to use open source languages such as R, Python, and Scala – and libraries on a secure enterprise platform with native Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop integration.

“Cloudera is focused on improving the user experience for data science and engineering teams, in particular those who want to scale their analytics using Spark for data processing and machine learning,” said Charles Zedlewski, Senior VP, Products at Cloudera. “The acquisition of Sense.io and its team provided a strong foundation, and Data Science Workbench now puts self-service data science at scale within reach for our customers.”

As open data science expands beyond the Python and R ecosystems to include deep learning frameworks like Tensorflow, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, MXnet, BigDL, and more, data science teams are looking for ways to bring these tools to their data, which is increasingly stored in Hadoop environments. Cloudera Data Science Workbench delivers a safe and secure environment to combine the latest open source innovations with the unified platform Cloudera customers trust. 

Currently in beta, Cloudera Data Science Workbench’s benefits include:

• Using R, Python, or Scala with libraries and frameworks, directly from a web browser.
• Direct access to data in secure Hadoop clusters with Spark and Impala.
• Support for full Hadoop security, especially Kerberos.

“By providing ready access to data, Cloudera Data Science Workbench decreases time to value of AI applications delivered with the DataRobot automated machine learning platform,” said Jeremy Achin, DataRobot CEO and co-founder. DataRobot has offices in Tokyo, Japan and Singapore. “DataRobot is fully integrated which allows Cloudera users to increase business value from the world's best algorithms and data science techniques through an easy to use interface.”

“Our customers’ IT groups often struggle to onboard data scientists to shared environments because their needs are so diverse, especially where open source tools are involved. The result is usually duplication, analytic silos, and limited security and governance. Meanwhile, data scientists are constantly looking to scale their work to larger datasets and more powerful compute platforms,” said Zedlewski. “With Data Science Workbench, Cloudera is helping IT groups and data scientists work together, bringing more users to shared environments in a way that delivers both flexibility and compliance.”