Apache Spark has been changing the game in the big data space for the last couple of years. It continues to drive forward rapidly in terms of technology and popularity. However, for many organizations, the need to learn new skills has been holding back their adoption and usage of Spark.

Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced a project to allow organizations to use existing skills and knowledge much more effectively in the Apache Spark ecosystem for their big data processing needs. That project is referred to as .NET for Apache Spark (https://github.com/dotnet/spark), developed as an open source project on GitHub by Microsoft and non-Microsoft engineers.

In this session, we will take you on the full range of the project, from the ideas behind it, through getting started, the performance and finally on common patterns where C# and F# can be highly effectively used in Spark today.