Northern Opts for Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub

Northern Trust Corp., provider of wealth management, asset servicing, and asset management, has launched a technology infrastructure initiative based on technology from Cloudera, Inc., in enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop.

Northern Trust has implemented a Cloudera enterprise data hub that will allow it to gather and mine system-generated data in order to improve its infrastructure performance, capacity and analytics.

Since implementing a Cloudera enterprise data hub, Northern Trust has begun analyzing performance data across more than 20,000 employee computers, which has enabled the creation of a scoring system to determine how quickly information can be accessed, analyzed and shared with clients to improve the delivery of services. Using Cloudera, Northern Trust has also collected performance data from various business applications, such as real-time health monitoring of cash payment processing. As a result, operations teams are able to identify transactional issues and rectify those issues, minimizing any impact to clients.

“At Northern Trust, our approach to infrastructure is to build and design it once, scale it out, make it globally available in a single, standard pattern, and then operationalize it,” Northern Trust CTO Scott Murray said. “We chose Cloudera because its solution fits well within this operating model. The company is ahead of the curve on its tools and particularly when it comes to data and governance. We found Cloudera to be extremely responsive, showing the same sense of urgency to meet our needs as we have at Northern Trust with our own clients.“

Northern Trust began testing numerous Hadoop distributions to compare both features and functionality. Cloudera was chosen for its robust tools, performance, and reputation.

“Northern Trust started by taking all the right steps, which is very important when a company considers going headlong into a production environment. They began with an infrastructure initiative that allowed them to learn which standards to develop, what patterns to consider, which components of Hadoop to certify for production use and put staffing in place to be successful,” said Mike Olson, chief strategy officer and founder, Cloudera. “At Cloudera, we pride ourselves on providing customized offerings that speak to unique industry use cases, but we also ensure that broad requirements are in place, including governance and compliance.“

Building off its initial success, Northern Trust plans to broaden its enterprise data hub for storing, accessing and analyzing transactional data. This will be core to its overall information delivery strategy and empower its data analytics team to provide a better view of financial markets in order to extend new service offerings.