Splunk to School Internet2 Consortium in Analytics

Top Predictions for Big Data in 2014

Given the shortage of people with Big Data analytics skills, there’s a lot of focus these days on anything and everything relating to Big Data at the university level. So it should not come as a surprise to discover that vendors are trying to get the inside track by exposing as many students as possible to their offerings.

But Splunk is now taking the idea to a higher level with the signing this week of a pre-negotiated contract and subscription pricing agreement for Splunk Enterprise with the Internet2 consortium that provides Internet services to more than 250 U.S. universities, 70 government agencies and 38 regional and state education networks.

According to Andrew Keating, program manager at Internet2, besides managing an alternative Internet for universities, Internet2 also acquires application and cloud services on behalf of the universities that make up the consortium.

While no university is required to use any of those applications or services, Keating says the terms and conditions under which any university or organization affiliated with that university can use an application or a service are pretty compelling.

From an IT perspective, this means that the likelihood that there will be a fair number of people coming out of universities in the years ahead with Splunk skills across a broad range of disciplines is pretty high. And as almost everyone in IT already knows, it’s a lot easier to get people to work for you when you’re providing tools that they already know how to use.