Sears Holdings Announces New Venture With Addition Of MetaScale(SM)

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., April 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), today announced the addition of a wholly owned subsidiary called MetaScale, a best-in-class provider of technology managed services and data solutions. MetaScale specializes in solutions for traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises across all industry verticals looking to efficiently establish and grow their big data expertise, experience immediate tactical success and begin to build out their fundamental big data capability in an organized and precise fashion.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day—so much that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. With 40 percent growth in global data generated per year versus 5 percent growth in IT spending, business enterprises are experiencing an increased need for big data management and smart infrastructure creation.

MetaScale provides managed services related to the widely adopted Apache Hadoop data management framework, enabling enterprises to drive new business value from their data with end-to-end solutions through a secure, private cloud environment.

MetaScale's services include building and configuring the Hadoop cluster; operating, managing and monitoring the cluster; integrating with other data management technologies; running data-cleansing and other data management projects; writing and developing MapReduce applications; and custom solution design and system integration.

"MetaScale is uniquely positioned to serve the needs of large-scale enterprise projects," said Keith Sherwell, CIO for Sears Holdings. "From a competitive standpoint, MetaScale has identified a gap in the market to provide a superior managed-services model to other large-scale traditional enterprises that haven't taken advantage of or investigated the potential of Apache Hadoop."

With an emphasis on data management infrastructure and associated services, MetaScale was developed over the past two years and expects to leverage its Hadoop expertise to partner with analytics tools and service providers, as well as system integrators that lack Hadoop-based infrastructure capabilities.

For more information about MetaScale and its support services, visit http://metascale.com or connect with MetaScale at www.linkedin.com/company/metascale-llc and www.twitter.com/bigdatamadeeasy.

About MetaScale
MetaScale provides best-in-class, technology-managed services and solutions to enterprises that are looking to unlock the potential in their data without the time, cost and complexity associated with traditional big data initiatives. MetaScale delivers an end-to-end solution so time is better spent in analyzing or massive-scale batch processing of data in a cloud model. MetaScale provides a full spectrum of services in a private cloud that leverages Hadoop, and helps businesses perform complex analytics and batch-production schedules not possible prior to Hadoop.  Part of the Sears Holdings family of companies (Sears Holdings Corporation-NASDAQ SHLD), MetaScale offers a mix of speed, scale, skills, and end-to-end solutions unavailable anywhere else in the big data space.

About Sears Holdings Corporation
Sears Holdings Corporation is a leading broadline retailer with over 4,000 full-line and specialty retail stores in the United States and Canada. Sears Holdings is the leading home appliance retailer as well as a leader in tools, lawn and garden, consumer electronics, and automotive repair and maintenance. Sears Holdings is the 2011 ENERGY STAR® Retail Partner of the Year. Key proprietary brands include Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard, and a broad apparel offering, including such well-known labels as Lands' End, Jaclyn Smith and Joe Boxer, as well as the Apostrophe and Covington brands. It also has the Country Living collection, which is offered by Sears and Kmart. We are the nation's largest provider of home services, with more than 11 million service calls made annually. Sears Holdings Corporation operates through its subsidiaries, including Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Kmart Corporation. For more information, visit Sears Holdings' website at www.searsholdings.com. Twitter: @searsholdings | Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SHCCareers.

MEDIA CONTACT
Tom Aiello
Sears Holdings
847-286-7387
[email protected]

SOURCE Sears Holdings