Integration is essential as the ecosystem of Big Data technology evolves. Without it, practitioners get lost in the challenges of shifting their data from one technology to another, increasing the chances that they’ll switch to a more consumable solution. When partner companies like Hewlett-Packard, Co.’s HP Vertica and Talend, Inc. work together to achieve seamless integration between different product puzzle pieces, it works towards their mutual benefit.

theCUBE guests Ashley Stirrup, CMO of Talend, and Steve Murfitt, Director of Technical Alliances at HP Vertica, spoke with Jeff Kelly about their approaches to integration and building a network of technologies that is both easy to use and effective.

Vertica’s Full Time Integration Team

Murfitt explained that his priority at HP Vertica is ensuring the different Big Data products work together in an integrated fashion and that all the different moving parts function seamlessly. His team is focused full-time on testing and integration. They work with Vertica’s various partners, prospects, and current customers to delve into what’s truly key for an effective integrated experience.

Murfitt noted that his group also keeps an eye on the horizon for upcoming technologies that will fit into the product ecosystem. Through testing, Murfitt said, his team can draw conclusions about how to solve integration issues, and makes recommendations to the higher ups, “So that over time, integrations get better and the customers get a better result.”

Talend’s unified platform

Shifting his attention to Stirrup, Kelly asked the Talend CMO to address data integration as part of the ecosystem. Since 2006, Stirrup said, Talend has been helping their customers integrate data in batch, in real time application integration, and through master data management.

Stirrup noted that what really sets Talend apart in the marketplace is that they are an open source company that offers customers a unified experience across different pieces of their platform. He called out that Talend has been working with Vertica for a long time and invests “a lot into making sure that [they’re] taking advantage of the latest capabilities that come out of Vertica.” Citing an example of Talend’s “simple drag and drop user interface,” Stirrup explained that Talend provides the interface and then “generates code that runs natively in HP Vertica.”

Pick your partner!

Jumping off from Stirrup’s discussion of Talend’s partnership with Vertica, Kelly wondered how Talend goes about selecting the parter with whom they should integrate tightly.

Stirrup explained that with over 1,800 customers in the Untied States and Europe, Talend spends a lot of time listening to their users about specific needs. But in such a rapidly moving marketplace, Talend also works with their partners, like HP Vertica and Hadoop distributors, to examine the “overall evolution of the landscape.”

“Across the board,” Stirrup said, “we’re looking at what the different elements of innovation are that are out there in the marketplace and evaluating which ones are ready for prime time.”

For newer innovation, Talend creates open source projects. As those innovations mature, though, Talend moves them into their enterprise products.

Turning to Murfitt, Kelly asked him to answer the same question he’d posed to Stirrup, “How do you go about making similar decisions about where [you] need to partner?”

The key, Murfitt said, is figuring out “which are the use cases that people are trying to use Vertica with, what are they trying to do with it.”

At the moment, he relayed, people are trying to get data into Vertica quickly and efficiently — which is why partners like Talend are so essential. Murfitt added: “We then have to look at what they’re trying to do with that data.” Murfitt called out visualization and predictive analytics products as areas of particular partnership interest to Vertica.

Murfitt also mentioned that part of the integration equation is helping those companies figure out how they can leverage Vertica. Partnership, Murfitt stressed, needs to go both ways: “If they’re not committed to working with you as much as you want to work with them, that obviously makes it much more difficult.”

Looking forward from an integration perspective

According to Murfitt, Vertica has uses triple-pronged approach to look into their future: They examine startups to see which gains the most traction, keep an eye on trends to check for gaps in Vertica’s coverage, and they work with customers to understand their pain points. This allocation of team resources to different aspects of innovation allows Vertica to see where integration needs to happen going forward.

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