Sharethrough Implements Databricks Cloud to Discover Hidden Patterns in Advertising Serving Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 10, 2015) - Databricks -- the company founded by the creators of the popular open-source Big Data processing engine Apache Spark with its flagship product, Databricks Cloud -- today announced that Sharethrough, the leading native advertising automation company, selected Databricks Cloud to process the terabyte-scale clickstream data generated by its ad serving platform. Switching to Databricks Cloud has enabled faster prototyping of new applications, easier debugging of complex pipelines and improved engineering productivity.

Sharethrough builds software for delivering ads into the natural flow of content sites and apps, also known as native advertising. Analyzing interactions between viewers and content is crucial for Sharethrough to measure and improve the effectiveness of its platform which serves ads on some of the most influential digital properties including Forbes and People. Sharethrough initially used Hive and self-hosted Hadoop clusters to meet its big-data processing needs, but found that productivity was impeded by the slow performance of Hive and the inefficiency of the self-hosted clusters.

The implementation of Databricks Cloud has helped Sharethrough overcome those challenges by combining the power of Apache Spark with a zero-management hosted platform and an interactive workspace. These critical data processing components allowed Sharethrough to:

• Easily experiment with data processing and aggregation to accelerate product development
• Quickly identify the root cause of production failures and minimize system downtime.
• Free two full-time engineers to focus on core responsibilities rather than infrastructure management

"Databricks Cloud has been transformational for us. It's given our data scientists and engineers unprecedented access to data and real-time analytics capabilities, which has enabled productivity levels we could have never imagined," said Robert Slifka, vice president of engineering at Sharethrough. "We're taking things that were previously very difficult to operationalize -- like running our own Hive cluster -- and replacing it with something cheaper, faster and easier to use with Databricks Cloud."

"The digital and native advertising spaces are moving at lightning speed and simply can't afford to pause for the ingest, sequencing and processing of large data sets," said Kavitha Mariappan, vice president of marketing at Databricks. "The implementation of Spark via Databricks Cloud -- for both Sharethrough and our other customers -- offers a validated platform that is not only easy to use and implement, but delivers processing power and insights much faster, so they can get back to servicing their customers to the best of their ability."

Download the Sharethrough case study here: https://databricks.com/customer-case-studies

For more information on Databricks Cloud, visit: https://databricks.com/product

About Databricks:
Databricks was founded by the team that created and continues to drive Apache Spark, the most active open source project in the Big Data ecosystem. Databricks' vision is to dramatically simplify big data processing and free users to focus on turning data into value. Databricks Cloud, a cloud platform built around Apache Spark, delivers on this vision by combining the power of Spark with a zero-management hosted platform and an initial set of applications built around common workflows. Databricks is venture-backed by Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. For more information, visit http://www.databricks.com.

About Sharethrough

Sharethrough is a leading native advertising automation company with a platform for the real-time buying, selling and management of native in-feed advertising. The company's flagship product, Sharethrough For Publishers (SFP), is the complete native supply side platform, powering directly sold campaigns and third-party content across a publisher's entire suite of properties. The Sharethrough Exchange (STX), the world's largest in-feed advertising exchange, is used by brand advertisers to promote all forms of content within the feeds of Sharethrough's publisher partners. Founded in 2008, the company is headquartered in San Francisco with global offices in New York,Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Detroit and London. Learn more at www.sharethrough.com.