I n Cluj Napoca, one of Romania’s biggest cities, Radu Ilea, Big Data DevOps at Siemens Corporate Technology, is working on a new project. Set to pave the way for how we buy utilities, it takes services that generate vast amounts of information and feeds it through software, using automation to turn it into smart insights.
Radu’s role is one part server administration, one part application development. At the moment, Radu is constructing a system that will allow consumers to switch between their water and electricity suppliers on a daily basis. “Depending on the weather, people consume different amounts of energy, so it makes sense that they should be able to buy exact amounts from their providers.” Currently, ‘fixed-term contracts’ and ‘hassle’ are cited as the reasons most people rarely switch energy providers. But utilities are like any other marketplace; choice is always better for the consumer. From water to traffic monitoring, making data more manageable is set to become an integral part of how we understand our lives.
With more and more data in the cloud, the sky’s the limit
Thanks to virtual space becoming increasingly agile and affordable, cloud computing is changing the way we use data. With everything living in one place, it’s allowing structured and unstructured data to be processed then and there, creating new opportunities for incongruous bulk activities to be turned into meaningful information.
“When I started to work on this project we had huge downtimes,” he says. Annoying, expensive and incredibly difficult, downtimes force everything to grind to a halt as developers fight to get servers back online. “If one workflow or application has a single error it can block the whole system,” he says.
Playing detective to find and remove these blocks is just one aspect of Radu’s job. The other is creating servers for clients. “I install the necessary server application that the client needs, the infrastructure and make sure that it’s secure for them to work on it.”
In the new world of work, Radu had to carve his own career path
Until he went to college, Radu was entirely self-taught. His family didn’t get an internet connection until his mid-teens and neither of his parents worked in engineering or IT so he couldn’t look to them for guidance. It turns out his biggest inspiration was an older friend at school, who did a bit of programming. “I don’t think he knows this,” Radu says. “But I wanted to be like him. So I learned programming languages like C++ and Java at home on my own.” During high school, Radu went to work for a local company creating HTML templates from Photoshop files and decided to study computer science at his local university.
Newly graduated, he began his career as a front-end developer. “I did that for nearly a year and then I worked for another company as a back-end developer,” he says. “I was working on a huge website regarding people genealogy. But I changed roles within the company as a system administrator because I like to build servers.” After another 18 months in that position, he decided to join Siemens.
Big data relies on smart solutions
The project Radu is working on could change the landscape of how we process big data. At the moment, each server has to be set-up according to a user’s needs. Using a combination of tightly built architecture and automation, these servers will be rolled out to all different types of projects. “I’m writing some special scripts in order to deploy an entire infrastructure into Amazon and Azure cloud by one click,” he says. It means companies can purchase off-the-shelf solutions for complex problems.
It’s testament to how diverse big data is, leaving no single industry unturned. “If a customer comes to Siemens, and says that he needs an easy way to help him buy chocolate from different markets, the development team can take this request and turn it into a workflow that buys chocolate or helps them produce chocolate themselves, at a lower price,” explains Radu. From chocolate to electricity, the secret to creating insights into how we make and consume things is the architecture of information.
Radu Ilea is Big Data DevOps, Corporate Technology, Research and Development for Siemens, Romania. He’s an avid mountain bike rider, and is a member of the SportGuru–BCR Racing Team. Find out more about working at Siemens
Animation: John Hitchcox
