Alberto Paro is an engineer, project manager, and software developer. He currently works as Big Data Practice Leader in NTTDATA in Italy on big data technologies, native cloud, and NoSQL solutions. He loves to study emerging solutions and applications mainly related to cloud and big data processing, NoSQL, NLP, and neural networks. In 2000, he graduated in computer science engineering from Politecnico di Milano. Then, he worked with many companies mainly using Scala/Java and Python on knowledge management solutions and advanced data mining products using the state-of-the-art big data software. A lot of his time is spent teaching how to effectively use big data solutions, NoSQL datastores, and related technologies.
It would have been difficult for me to complete this book without the support of a large number of people. First, I would like to thank my wife, my children (Andrea and Giulia) and the rest of my family for their support. A personal thanks to my best friends, Mauro and Michele, colleagues and to all the people that helped me and my family. I'd like to express my gratitude to everyone at Packt Publishing who are involved in the development and production of this book. I'd like to thank Athikho Sapuni Rishana for guiding this book to completion and the reviewers for patiently going through the first draft and providing their valuable feedback. Their professionalism, courtesy, good judgment, and passion for books are much appreciated.
