Big Data Hadoop Death Match – Again But – Hadoop Era is Different from Linux Era

Matt Asay, VP of big data cloud startup called Nodeable, writes a post today titled “Becoming Red Hat:  Cloudera & Hortonworks Big Data Death Match”.  He grabbed that headline from a link to our content on free research site Wikibon.org -thx Matt.

The argument of who contributes more to Hadoop was surfaced by Gigaom a year ago and that didn’t play well in the market because know one cared.  Back then one year ago I was super critical of Hortonworks when they launched and also critical of Cloudera of not leading more in the market.

This notion of a cold war between the two companies is not valid.  Why?  The market is growing way to fast to matter.  Both Cloudera and Hortonworks will be very successful and it’s not a winner take all market.

What a difference one year makes in this market.  One year later Hortonworks has earned the right to say that they have serious traction and Cloudera who had a sizable lead has to be worried.  I don’t see a so called Death Match and I don’t think that the Linux metaphor is appropriate in this market.

I’ve met Matt at events and he is a smart guy.  I like his open source approach and his writings.  We both are big fans of Mike Olson the CEO of Cloudera.  I got to know Mike while SiliconANGLE was part of Cloudera Labs and Matt is lucky to have Mike sit on his company’s board at Nodeable.  Being a huge fan of Cloudera I’m extremely biased toward Cloudera.  That being said I have to disagree with Matt on a few things in his post.

Let me break it down his key points where I agree and disagree.

Matt says “Why did Red Hat win? Community.”

I agree that community wins when the business and tech model depends on the community.  My question on the open source side is that in the Hadoop era do we need only one company – a winner take all?  I say no.

Matt says  … “In community and other areas, Linux is a great analogue for Hadoop. I’ve suggested recently that Hadoop market observers could learn a lot from the indomitable rise of Linux, including from how it overcame technical shortcomings over time through communal development. But perhaps a more fundamental observation is that, as with Linux, there’s no room for two major Hadoop vendors.”

He’s just flat out wrong for many reasons.  Mainly the market of hardware is much different and open source is more evolved and advanced.  The analog of Linux just doesn’t translate not even close to 100%.

Matt says “… there will be truckloads of cash earned by EMC, IBM and others who use Hadoop as a complement to drive the sale of proprietary hardware and software”

I totally agree and highlight that production deployments matter most because of the accelerated demand for solutions.  This amplifys my point above that faster time to value is generated by new Hadoop based technology which also reaffirms my point about this not being like Linux.

Matt says  “But for those companies aspiring to be the Red Hat of Hadoop – that primary committer of code and provider of associated support services – there’s only room for one such company, and it’s Cloudera orHortonworks. I don’t feel MapR has the ability to move Hadoop development, given that it doesn’t employ key Hadoop developers as Cloudera and Hortonworks do, so it has no chance of being a dominant Hadoop vendor.”

I don’t think that the notion of one winner take all will happen – many think that it will happen – I don’t.  There are many nuances here and based upon my experience in the Linux and Hadoop market the open source communities are much too advanced now verses the old school Linux days.

The Hadoop Era Is Not The Linux Era

Why do I see it a bit different than Matt.  Because I believe his (and others) Linux analogs to Hadoop is flawed thinking.   It’s just not the same.

We are in the midst of a transformation of infrastructure from the old way to the new way – a modern way.  This new modern era is what the Hadoop era is about.  Linux grew out of frustration of incumbant legacy non innovators in a slow moving and proprietary hardware refresh cycle.  There was no major inflection point driving the Linux evolution just pure frustration on access to code and price.  The Hadoop Era is different.  It’s transformative in a radical faster way than Linux ever was.  It’s building on massive convergence in cloud, mobile, and social all on top of Moores Law.

The timing of Hadoop with cloud and mobile infrastructure is the perfect storm.

I’ve been watching this Hadoop game from the beginning and it’s like watching Nascar – who will slingshot to victory will be determined in the final lap.  The winners will be determined by who can ship the most reliable production ready code.  Speed is of the essence in this Hadoop era.

If history in tech trends (Linux) can teach us anything it’s that the first player doesn’t always become the innovator and/or winner.  So Cloudera has to be nervous.

Bottom line: the market is much different and faster than back in the Linux day.

Additional Info:  CEO of VMware on the New Modern Era

Follow this link <link: modern era of computing> to hear the new CEO of VMware Pat Gelsinger talk about this new modern way pre-cloud and pre-big data.  Pat hits some points that I was speaking to above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlIiYyYivfo&list=PL91BECC8A4F3161AD&feature=player_detailpage#t=471s

 Other related videos are all on 

SiliconANGLE.tv and YouTube.com/SiliconAngle

Videos:  Big data playlist on YouTube SiliconANGLE.tv