1.
Accelerating
Time-to-Success
forYour Big Data
Initiatives
BROCHURE

2.
AcceleratingTime-to-Success forYour Big Data Initiatives2
Big data has gone mainstream. Everywhere you look, people
are talking about how to unlock value from the massive, ever-
growing volumes of information residing within and beyond
traditional data repositories.
And it’s not just talk. According to a Forrester Consulting survey,
61 percent of IT decision-makers are leveraging Hadoop in proof-
of-concept (POC) or production environments — and another
20 percent are planning to.1 Why are big data projects front
and center? Because by improving decision-making, they can
profoundly impact nearly every aspect of your business, from
operational efficiencies and product development to customer
interactions and management processes.
Imagine, for example, if you could identify patterns that enable
you to predict — and ultimately avoid — manufacturing line
and shipment delivery problems. Or if you could increase sales
through a recommendation engine for online purchases that
factors in everything from purchase history to demographic
patterns in real-time, and instantly presents tailored product
options and pricing. Or if by applying a big data approach to
marketing campaign analysis, you could optimize margins
across channels.
The use cases are far-reaching. In addition to the examples
above, big data practices are commonly applied to data lake/data
refinery projects, risk, fraud and compliance applications. They’re
also ideal for improving customer churn and experience, better
understanding of consumer sentiment and social listening, as
well as for machine-generated data analyses.
Complexities Inherent in Big Data
Implementations
Although envisioning how big data projects can benefit your business is relatively easy, making them happen is anything but.The
challenges become evident as soon as you start the process and only get more complex over time. Consider what you need to factor
into your plans:
Sizing and Budget: Building out a big data infrastructure — with the compute, storage, security and network bandwidth to handle
large, growing volumes of data — can be costly. How much infrastructure do you need? Should you prepare for a POC or a full-scale
implementation? What kind of growth do you anticipate? Do you have enough data center capacity and, if not, do you have the
budget to expand? And how will you mitigate the risk of technology obsolescence?

3.
Three key variables will affect your infrastructure sizing requirements: use cases, data sources and data retention. If any of these
grow significantly in scope, you may find yourself scrambling to expand your system. But if all of them ramp quickly, the challenges
can be overwhelming.
1. Use cases: Once you start realizing success from your
initial project, chances are that business leaders across your
enterprise will want to leverage data-driven strategies —
and your environment — for a multitude of new use cases.
2. Data sources: The sources your company has been
analyzing are probably a small subset of what is available.
According to Forrester Research, most organizations are
analyzing only about 12 percent of their data2
. To handle
more use cases, the number and type of data sources that
feed into your environment will most assuredly expand. IDC
predicts that the global universe of data will about double
every two years, reaching 40,000 exabytes or 40 trillion
gigabytes by 20203
. Even if the data you analyze multiplies
at a fraction of this rate, it can quickly push the limits of
your infrastructure.
3. Data retention periods: Requirements around data retention
will change if the need for long-term trend analyses grows
or if government policies dictate that you retain certain
types of information, requiring data to be stored for many
more months and years.
v
Big Data Solution Evolution
Business Insight (Analytics)
and Integration Services
Big Data Application
Lifecycle Management
Big Data Foundation
Services
Content Management eCommerce
Complementary CenturyLink Solutions Services
CenturyLink
Database
as a Service
CenturyLink
Disaster
Recovery
DATA INTEGRATION
The Seven Qualities of Production Systems Applied to Big Data
QUALITY WHAT IT MEANS
1 Experience Users’ perceptions of the usefulness, usability, and desirability of the application
2 Availability The readiness of the service or application to perform its functions when needed
3 Performance The speed to perform functions to meet business and user expectations
4 Scalability Handle increasing or decreasing volumes of transactions, services, and data
5 Adaptability The ease with which an application or service can be changed or extended
6 Security Supports the security properties of confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization, and nonrepudiation
7 Economy Minimize cost to build, operate, change an application or service without compromising its business value
Performance: Your users must be able to access and analyze data from distant and disparate sources as though it were local. Having
sufficient compute power and an infrastructure sized to your application are critical for rapid analysis. In addition, the closer the data
center is to users, the better the performance. Is your infrastructure adequate and your data center close enough? Can your users
reliably access what they need when they need it?
Complimenting CenturyLink Solutions Services

4.
AcceleratingTime-to-Success forYour Big Data Initiatives4
Timing: In this economy, every day you’re not applying big data
practices is a day you’re losing ground to competitors who are.
Your IT department may be able to stand up a test environment
in a few months, but you’ll likely have to go in the queue for
production development. And each time you need to change, you
may have to go back in the queue and wait out the procurement
cycle. How much time are you willing to let pass?
In-house Skills: Your existing IT team may be able to handle a
big data POC project. However, the skills required for production-
grade big data management and analysis are a different animal
altogether. Finding big data professionals to handle a production
initiative is far from easy. According to McKinsey Co., demand
for those professionals in the U.S. alone will exceed the available
supply by 140,000 to 190,000 positions by 2018.4
Keep in mind that different tradeoffs may apply at different points
in your implementation cycle. For instance, if you’re focusing
on a new use case POC, you may only need to support a few
requirements using dummy data. In this case, your current
infrastructure and staff are probably sufficient. However, when
you move to production using real data, security is going to be
important, especially if the data is sensitive. If you are budget-
constrained, you may need to allocate more resources to
security measures than, say, compute. Likewise, use cases that
emerge down the road may require long-term storage while
others may be more dependent on real-time analysis where
retention is shorter, but performance — and therefore, compute
power, infrastructure size, data center location and bandwidth
— is critical. With all of these tradeoffs, the need to regularly
reassess and accommodate changing big data priorities adds to
an already complex picture.
Managed Services:
The Rx for Big Data Initiatives
The reality is that most organizations don’t have the infrastructure, expertise, budget and/or desire to implement, effectively scale
and manage an enterprise-grade big data environment. Instead, many choose to partner with a big data managed services provider.
Here’s why:
• Time-to-market: The right partner can quickly provide the
infrastructure that best suits your implementation. As new
use cases come on board, they can be rapidly deployed and
put into production.
• Flexibility: You don’t have to worry about how to handle
changing priorities. Your partner should have the flexibility to
accommodate all those variables without the tradeoffs that
would be required if you were implementing and managing
your own big data environment. This includes rapidly scaling
up to accelerate results as well as the ability to scale down
as projects end, without suffering investment losses from
under-utilized infrastructure.
• Expertise: The big data experts you would be trying to hire
are already working at your managed services provider.
Right away, you can benefit from the knowledge and
experience they’ve gained from a wide range of big data
projects for clients of all shapes and sizes.
• Simplicity: By going with a managed services provider for
big data, you strip away the complexity. Instead of being
distracted by infrastructure deployment and management
issues, you are freed up to focus on higher-level priorities
and applying data-driven strategies to your business.

5.
The CenturyLink Advantage
CenturyLink enables you to optimize management of your data assets so you can make better decisions in real-time. Our offerings
are designed to provide everything enterprises need to conceptualize, implement and scale a world-class big data solution. With more
than 26 petabytes of information under management for enterprise clients and more than 30 percent of the Fortune 500 running on
our platforms, CenturyLink has the technology and expertise required to turn your data into a strategic advantage.
Suite of Big Data Solutions
Our solutions are headlined by CenturyLink Big Data Foundation Services, which combine CenturyLink’s mature global infrastructure
and network connectivity with proven big data software in a fully hosted and managed service. Designed to optimize storage,
integration, retrieval and analysis of all your structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, Big Data Foundation Services includes:
• Cloudera Manager for complete management of the
Hadoop platform. This is where the client components that
interact with the cluster are installed and tools for ingesting
data into the cluster are loaded.
• Enterprise-grade infrastructure as a service, including high-
bandwidth network connectivity with built-in redundancy for
extra reliability; scalability enabled by CenturyLink’s more
than 60 data centers and global Tier 1 MPLS network; as
well as robust security across data center, network and
application layers.
• Flexibility to integrate analytics capabilities and custom
application development as part of a custom solution.
• CenturyLink’s Cognilytics solution brings highly sought after
data implementation and analytical services for big data
applications like Hadoop and SAP HANA. Advanced analytics
capabilities include Model Controller to design, develop and
deploy models, Decision Analyzer to produce analytics, and
Navigator for data visualization.
To round out the CenturyLink big data solution set, we will phase application lifecycle management services into our core offering.The
services will cover all aspects, from specification, development and QA through application deployment and ongoing enhancement.
Enterprise-grade Infrastructure
When it comes to big data projects, infrastructure can mean the difference between success and failure. When you consider the
enormous and ever-growing volumes of data that organizations need to store, access, integrate and analyze, the importance of a
scalable, always-on, high-performing and secure global infrastructure is paramount. CenturyLink has been providing high-performing,
ultra-secure infrastructure for complex applications for more than 15 years.
• Scalability: Our computing infrastructure is at the ready.
With CenturyLink, you never have to worry about compute,
storage, network or physical capacity. With our state-of-the-
art data centers, comprising more than two million square
feet of floor space, we can easily handle whatever you
need, whenever you need it. Elastic bandwidth enables you
to scale connectivity to efficiently handle increased usage,
and gives you the flexibility to scale down, conserving costs
when projects are completed.

6.
AcceleratingTime-to-Success forYour Big Data Initiatives6
• Availability and Reliability: CenturyLink’s infrastructure is
available 24/7, wherever your users are located. Data centers
across North America, Europe and Asia deliver 100% uptime
and connect to customer endpoints via CenturyLink’s
advanced Tier 1 IP network. Built on a Multi-Protocol Label
Switching (MPLS) backbone, it ensures fast reroute and core
redundancy, and provides superior reliability with less than
a 50-millisecond network recovery. With this network —
which carries more than 20% of the world’s Internet traffic
and has a global reach of 85 countries — all of your users
can readily access your big data environment. By running
your big data environment in a CenturyLink data center near
you, and by backing up data and additional instances of big
data applications in remote centers that can be instantly
accessed, you ensure business continuity in the event of
weather or power disruptions.
• Performance: With CenturyLink, proximity of data centers
to users is never an issue. Our global footprint is particularly
well-suited for multi-location companies whose users can
access our local data centers.To effectively handle huge
quantities of structured (e.g., relational databases), semi-
structured (e.g., XML files) and unstructured (e.g., basic
text files) data and enable ultra-fast decision-making,
CenturyLink delivers high-bandwidth, low-latency network
connectivity. Our broad range ofTDM and Ethernet access
options and bandwidth scale from 1.5MBps to 10Gbps —
ensuring high performance for any data requirements.
Moreover,Tier 1 connectivity results in superior speed so your
users are served content more quickly.
• Security Compliance: According to IDC, only about half
the information in the digital universe that needs protection
has protection, and the amount of unprotected data will
grow by a factor of 26 to more than 40 percent in 20205
.
To ensure your data is protected and can’t be accessed by
unauthorized users, we provide advanced security at the
physical data center, network and application levels.
To meet the needs of customers in industries with strict regulatory requirements, we provide an environment that enables faster
compliance. For instance, we are compliant with SSAE 16 service controls, and publically traded and ecommerce companies that rely on
our infrastructure to address SOX and PCI standards. Likewise, financial services and healthcare provider organizations have the controls
to meet FISMA and HIPAA requirements.
Big Data Ecosystem
CenturyLink puts your big data environment in context of your broader IT ecosystem. Whether you need an Oracle data warehouse
for your data, analytics to aid decision-making, or want to tie in with ecommerce, SAP or more comprehensive disaster recovery
applications — we can integrate all, or any mix of, these complementary solutions.

7.
Global Headquarters
Monroe, LA
(800) 728-8471
EMEA Headquarters
United Kingdom
+44 (0)118 322 6000
Asia Pacific Headquarters
Singapore
+65 6591 8824
Canada Headquarters
Toronto, ON
1-877-387-3764
About CenturyLink Business
CenturyLink, Inc. is the third largest telecommunications
company in the United States. Headquartered in Monroe, LA,
CenturyLink is an SP 500 company and is included among the
Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations. CenturyLink
Business delivers innovative private and public networking and
managed services for global businesses on virtual, dedicated
and colocation platforms. It is a global leader in data and voice
networks, cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for
enterprise business customers.
For more information visit www.centurylink.com/enterprise.
©2015 CenturyLink. All Rights Reserved. The CenturyLink mark, pathways logo and certain CenturyLink product names are the
property of CenturyLink. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Services not available everywhere. Business
customers only. CenturyLink may change or cancel services or substitute similar services at its sole discretion without notice.
31020714-2
1
Big Momentum for Big Data, January 2014, Forrester Consulting on behalf of CenturyLink
2
Forrsights Strategy Spotlight BI and Big Data, Q4 2012, Forrester Research
3
The Digital Universe in 2020, December 2012, IDC
4
Big Data:The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity, McKinsey Company, May 2011
5
The Digital Universe in 2020, December 2012, IDC
Proven Managed Services
Our top-rated managed services underpin all of our big data offerings. As evidenced by our leader position in Gartner’s Managed Hosting
Magic Quadrant, ISO compliance and ITIL-based managed services, CenturyLink has earned a reputation for effectively handling extremely
complex enterprise needs. Our big data and hosting experts can guide you every step of the way — or at any point in the cycle — to
ensure you get maximum value from your big data initiative. Clients rely on us for everything from use case planning and business case
development, to environment planning and deployment, to complete management of the infrastructure, Hadoop and other big data
application environments.
When you partner with CenturyLink for big data solutions, you’re setting the foundation for long-term success:
• Innovation: Deploy new data-driven strategies and innovate
compelling new products, services and capabilities by extracting
strategic insights from constantly growing data volumes.
• Speed: Realize results sooner by compressing big data
project implementation time, quickly scaling use cases and
range of data sources, and easily extending and integrating
your existing information management capabilities into
CenturyLink big data solutions.
• Reduced Risk: Avoid the technology obsolescence that’s
inherent in this highly dynamic market and the capacity
issues that can stall in-house big data projects. Control
expenses with predictable cost models that can flex with
your business. Ensure continuity of mission-critical operations
with a highly available, secure and scalable solution that
leverages CenturyLink’s proven expertise in managing
information and systems for the world’s largest companies.
CenturyLink enables you to unlock the value of all your big data assets, fast. No matter where you are in your implementation process,
how quickly you need to add use cases and data sources, or where your users reside, we’ll get your big data project where it needs to
be, so you can focus on innovating your business and staying ahead of the competition through effective data-driven strategies.
WHAT MAKES CENTURYLINK DIFFERENT?
• Infrastructure expertise
• Proven ITIL-based managed services approach
• Implementation flexibility
• CenturyLink / CTL network
• Commercial model to support production implementations
• Complementing products and solutions

8.
AcceleratingTime-to-Success forYour Big Data Initiatives8
For more information about CenturyLink Business,
visit www.centurylink.com/enterprise.
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