Yahoo! India Research and Development has entered into an agreement with Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, to support its faculty and students in cloud computing research.
Yahoo has set up a grid computing lab here on IIT campus, consisting of a cluster of high-end servers running its open source Hadoop software, which will provide the infrastructure necessary to conduct research on big data and cloud computing systems.
“This partnership is beneficial to both of us. Our Indian product offerings generate over 200 terabytes of data every week. The big data research that will be performed at this lab can help us in analysing this data, which in turn, can be used to improve our various products – such as Yahoo front page,” said Hari Vasudev, Vice-President, Yahoo! Inc.
“Areas where we lag in India can be potentially improved through this research. It can help us personalize content, improve our spam-detection in Yahoo mail, and even refine our image search,” he said.
Yahoo! India, which recently launched a free online video service, is looking at playing to its own strengths in the Indian market.
“Offerings such as Yahoo! Cricket or providing Bollywood content through our new video service help us leverage our content strength and look at the market through an enhanced portfolio approach,” Mr. Vasudev said.
Student research
The lab, which cost over Rs.50 lakh to build, will be accessible to students who have cloud computing courses and doctoral candidates.
“We are really looking at finding different paradigms in the way cloud computing can be programmed. This is useful for teaching students cloud concepts, and helping our post graduate students with their research. While we have started experimental operations, the students will be able to start using it from next semester,” said Professor D Janakiram, Department of Computer Science, IIT-Madras.
