Putting the power
of data to work
Management Science Associates uses Hadoop
platform for big data analytics on Cisco®
infrastructure to power insights for better decisions.
“We had the people and the data. Now we have the
technology to enhance our predictive analytics.”
- Karl Herleman, Vice President of Information Technology, Information
Management Solutions Division, Management Science Associates
Growing data volumes means growing infrastructure demands. When the
two don’t scale together, costs can rise, while performance and growth lag
behind.
• Enhance scalability and performance to manage
data demands
Challenges
• Help customers make data-driven decisions that
increase revenues
• Control infrastructure costs
Management Science Associates (MSA) is a data-driven company. Its
Information Management Solutions (IMS) division is the company’s largest
division and provides data-driven insights to manufacturing and distributor
customers in the consumer packaged goods industry. The division’s big data
analytics service provides customers with insights on topics ranging from
high-level consumer purchasing behavior and sentiment analysis to product
movement performance at the item and store level.
“The ability to correlate and analyze data in near real time and then use those
to predict what’s next is critical for our customers,” says Karl Herleman, vice
president of Information Technology for MSA’s IMS division. “A rear-view analysis
of last week’s trends is no longer adequate in today’s competitive environment.”
To integrate the multiple, massive sets of structured and unstructured data that
MSA was acquiring from its customers more easily and cost effectively, MSA
needed to increase the scalability and performance of its big data and analytics
infrastructure.
Case Study | Management Science Associates
Size: 800 Employees
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
© 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Industry: Information Technology
1
Cisco provides a high-performance,
scalable, efficient infrastructure for deeper,
richer analytics.
Solutions
• Built a powerful new platform for big data
analytics on the MapR Apache Hadoop
distribution platform
• Used the Cisco Unified Computing System™
(Cisco UCS®) as the underlying infrastructure
Rapid access with increased visibility and savings
Running the MapR Hadoop distribution platform on Cisco UCS means faster
access to massive data volumes, while controlling costs.
“In our legacy environment, our expenses were high, because we planned for
the eventual peak in capacity,” says Corey Grone, senior information systems
manager for MSA’s Information Technology Systems and Services (ITSS)
division. “We now have visibility into actual capacity usage, so we can plan
our purchases more efficiently and charge our customers by consumption.”
Powerful scalability, fast deployment
To keep pace with customer data volumes, the
IMS division’s server environment is expected to
double over the next year.
“The scalability of Cisco UCS gives us more agility and flexibility, and reduces
our time to market,” says Herleman.
Anticipating results, reducing surprises
Manufacturing customers running incentive programs can now predict business
outcomes with more accuracy and speed, and prescribe the actions needed to
optimize results. This results in fewer surprises when it’s time to pay out rewards
and manage budgets in a dynamic marketplace.
A strategic alignment between partners
When MSA selected the MapR distribution platform for Hadoop, Cisco was
the best choice to provide the underlying infrastructure.
“We knew that Cisco and MapR would be in lockstep with each other,”
said Herleman. “They are strategically aligned with each other, and with our
business.”
© 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
2
Ease of management through automation
The management automation capabilities of Cisco UCS help enable MSA
to spin up servers in minutes instead of hours or days. These capabilities
also save MSA from having to manually maintain individual servers. Service
profiles have already cut firmware upgrade time from 16 hours to 2 hours—
with no additional headcount required.
• Daily, near real-time customer reports for faster
decisions
Results
• Ability to sort 1 TB of data in under 16 minutes
across 8 nodes
• Reduced server provisioning time from 6 hours
to 2 hours
Creating a domino effect throughout the business
With plans to more than double the data center capacity over the next year,
other divisions are expected to jump on the bandwagon.
“The Hadoop platform on Cisco UCS has transformed our division,” says
Herleman. “All aspects of our business are now looking seriously at this
technology.”
Products & Services
Data Center
• Cisco UCS C240 M4 Rack Server
Network Management
• Cisco UCS Manager
Routing and Switching
• Cisco Nexus® 7000, 5000, and
2000 Series Switches
Database
• MapR Apache Hadoop
Fabric Interconnects
• Cisco UCS 6248UP 48-Port Fabric
Interconnect
Americas Headquarters
Cisco Systems, Inc.
San Jose, CA
Asia Pacific Headquarters
Cisco Systems (USA) Pte. Ltd.
Singapore
Europe Headquarters
Cisco Systems International BV Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Cisco has more than 200 offices worldwide. Addresses, phone numbers, and fax numbers are listed on the Cisco Website at www.cisco.com/go/offices.
Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL:
www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship
between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
© 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
09/15