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Massachusetts invests in open cloud project

The million for the Massachusetts Open Cloud Project serves as the first investment from the Collaborative Research and Development Matching Grant Fund, created as part of the 2012 Economic Development Bill that serves as a competitive lever to expand innovation capacity.

Massachusetts will allocate $3 million to launch an open cloud project, where state universities and the private sector will collaborate to design a new public cloud-computing infrastructure to spur big data innovation.

Called the Massachusetts Open Cloud Project, the program coincides with the release of the 2014 Mass Big Data Report, which looks at the growth and competitiveness of the state’s big-data industry.

“Massachusetts’ competitive edge lies in our exceptional academic institutions, cutting-edge private companies, highly skilled workforce and above all our willingness to work together to address the increasing demand for big data solutions,” Gov. Deval Patrick said.

The $3 million for the project serves as the first investment from the Collaborative Research and Development Matching Grant Fund, created as part of the 2012 Economic Development Bill that serves as a competitive lever to expand innovation capacity and is administered by the Innovation Institute and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

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The project includes engagement from Harvard University, Boston University and Northeastern University, along with MIT. Industry partners include Cisco, EMC, SGI, Red Hat, Juniper, Canonical, Dell, Intel, Mellanox, Brocade, DataDirect Networks, Mathworks, Plexxi, Cambridge Computer Services, Enterprise DB and Riverbed

The 2014 Mass Big Data Report underscores the strong collaborations among industry, academia and government. It outlines the prospects for growth in areas such as talent, workforce and public data access, and identifies opportunities to promote and expand the big data sector.

Overall, the report finds that the global big data market is expected to top $48 billion by 2017, up from $11.6 billion in 2012.

While hardware and services are expected to continue to account for the greatest share of revenue, the fastest-growing sector is likely to be in big data-enabled applications.

In Massachusetts, big data applications in health care, life sciences and financial services appear highly promising, and local firms are hiring rapidly, seeking to fill as many as 3,000 big data-related jobs in the region over the next 12 months.

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