Hewlett-Packard Co. has become the latest vendor to build a bridge between Big Data on Hadoop and traditional SQL databases with a version of its HP Vertica database for Hadoop. The technology is aimed at allowing everyday business users to manipulate unstructured data using the same familiar syntax they’ve been using to access traditional relational systems.

HP Vertica on Hadoop comes on the heels of HP rolling out SQL-on-Hadoop capabilities in an earlier Vertica release. That added the ability to run structured queries against information stored in the batch processing framework without having to move it around. That is a requirement when it comes to the large volumes of data Hadoop is designed to ingest, which are far too big to shuffle around. The new product promises lightening fast SQL-based queries on top of the world’s most powerful Big Data store.

HP says Vertica on Hadoop will be available on a node-based pricing model, making it cost-efficient to store unstructured data in data lakes and easing the task of data exploration within Hadoop. This version of Vertica is also compatible with all three of the big Hadoop distros – Cloudera, MapR and Hortonworks Inc., in which HP made a strategic $50 million investment earlier this year – or any combination of the three.

The move positions Vertica to serve enterprise database needs across the stack. “Organizations can store data in HP Vertica or any Hadoop distribution, explore data in place using HP Vertica for SQL for Hadoop, and serve the highest-performance analytic needs for mixed workloads with HP Vertica Enterprise,” said Shilpa Lawande, GM of platforms for HP Software’s Big Data Business Unit.

While Vertica on Hadoop’s interoperability is the biggest headline, a key takeaway is that organizations now have a simple and seamless way to explore and derive value from data stored on the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). However, that’s not enough to differentiate in a market where practically every major player offers comparable features, often for free. Rather, the main purpose of Vertica for SQL on Hadoop is to bolster HP’s broader database value proposition and the even bigger picture of its HAVEn analytics stack, of which both Vertica and Hadoop are key components.

Maria Deutscher contributed to this story.

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