"We work daily to improve operational reliability by focusing on the areas we control, and working with all our partners, " spokeswoman Kate Modolo said.

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MapR from the beginning chose to use Hadoop as a platform and to extend it in ways that make it much more useful to the enterprise, such as exposing HDFS through NFS and fixing operational and reliability problems with the name node.

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They also argue that competition could improve the operational performance and reliability of both engines, insulate the military from engine-related problems leading to fleet groundings, and bolster the jet-engine industrial base.

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Operational performance and reliability are two key areas.

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As one of the world's most reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient web infrastructures, AWS has changed the way businesses think about technology infrastructure--there are no up-front expenses or long-term commitments, capital expense is turned into variable operating expense, resources can be added or shed as quickly as needed, and engineering resources are freed up from the undifferentiated heavy lifting of running onsite infrastructure - all without sacrificing operational performance, reliability, or security.

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While choosing a social media platform service provider, look for reliability performance, security, operational capabilities, strong hosting abilities, compatibility with existing IT infrastructure and value-based pricing.

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This process could result in a piecemeal assemblage of potentially incompatible parts of dubious reliability in an untested reactor of questionable technology with no operational track record.

ECONOMIST: Letters