Tsinghua University turns to US tech firm for big data push

China's prestigious Tsinghua University is teaming up with the United States tech firm Cloudera Inc to meet the country's growing demand for big data talents.

Under the deal, Cloudera, which offers Apache Hadoop-based software and services, will provide free big data curriculum resources to Tsinghua University, to cultivate more talents that can fuel China's big data drive.

Apache Hadoop is an open-source software framework for distributed storage and distributed processing of very large data sets on computer clusters. Currently, most big data professionals learn and share their knowledge on the open-source online community.

Tsinghua University said it would offer five to 10 Hadoop courses to both undergraduates and post graduates. In addition to basic abilities, it will also work with Cloudera to focus on further research so as to promote the development of the global big data industry.

The partnership comes as China steps up efforts to encourage traditional enterprises to embrace big data and other cutting-edge tech to counter against slower economic growth. With Internet data centers building around the country, there is a big shortage of big data talents.

Cloudera, which chip giant Intel Corp invested $740 million into, is one of the pioneers in offering big data training services. The deal is also part of the US firm's broad efforts to tap into commercial opportunities in China.

Doug Cutting, Chief Architect of Cloudera and the co-creator of Apache Hadoop, said Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd all have been using Hadoop for many years and also contributed significantly to its development.

Research firm International Data Corp predicts that the global big data market will reach $23.8 billion this year.