UPDATED 07:32 EDT / MARCH 06 2015

theCUBE Live At Hadoop Summit 2014 NEWS

Hadoop vendors turn up the heat as ODP debate ensues

theCUBE Live At Hadoop Summit 2014Hadoop heavyweights Cloudera Inc. and Hortonworks, Inc. were at each other’s throats again this week, as they continued a lively debate around the merits of what the latter company is calling the new “governing body” of Hadoop’s development, the so-called Open Data Platform (ODP).

For those out of the loop, the ODP was established just over two weeks ago at the behest of Hortonworks and its main ally Pivotal, Inc., which simultaneously open-sourced a bunch of its own proprietary software to throw into what it’s calling the new “standard” for Hadoop. But Cloudera, together with niche Hadoop vendor MapR Technologies, Inc., vehemently denounced the group as a rival to the Apache Software Foundation.

“Go find a problem that ODP solves,” Cloudera’sco-founder and Chief Strategy Officer CEO Mike Olson told SiliconANGLE. “No partner tells us that standards in MapReduce is a problem. There is no problem ODP solves.”

More than a few people disagree with Olson though, including vendors like EMC, Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, SAS Institute, Inc., and General Electric Co., who’ve all thrown their weight behind the ODP. But none have been more vociferous in the ODP’s defence than Hortonworks, whose President Herb Cunitz said the organization’s emergence is a sign of telling changes afoot in the Hadoop market.

Hadoop consolidates

 

Cunitz told ZDNet the market is moving extremely rapidly and the time had come for those invested in Hadoop to decide which side of the fence they are on.

“[They can either] work with what we’re driving around Hortonworks Data Platform and the Open Data Platform and the alliance; or they can say, ‘Hey, I don’t want to align with anybody. I’m just going to take whatever comes out of Apache Software Foundation’, and then they’re beholden to package it, support it, distribute it themselves,” Cunitz told ZDNet.

That’s exactly what Cloudera and MapR are doing, but Cunitz said there’s little room for others in a consolidating market.

“It’s very hard for anyone else to influence [Apache Hadoop] because all those people either work for us, or the next company would be Cloudera, or somebody else in the space,” Cunitz said. “There are only a handful of those people around.”

Cloudera would probably agree that the Hadoop world is consolidating, but it argues the formation of the ODP is clear a sign that it is actually winning the race. Indeed, so confident is Cloudera that its CEO Tom Reilly told GigaOM this week the company has declared victory over one of its major competitors – namely Pivotal Inc., whom he believes has essentially capitulated and thrown its lot in with Hortonworks.

Reilly said the ODP is “a ruse and, frankly, a graceful exit for Pivotal”, which has laid off most of its Hadoop employees and has now outsourced Hadoop development and support to Cloudera’s rival.

In the interview, Reilly reiterated much of what Cloudera’s Olson told SiliconANGLE last week, saying that the ODP really isn’t necessary from a technical viewpoint, given that it the market has already standardized on some of the most mature components of Hadoop.

“I don’t think we could have scripted [the Open Data Platform news] any better,” Reilly told GigaOM. “[T]he formation of the ODP … is a big shift in the landscape. We think it’s a shift to our advantage.”

Money matters

 

Cloudera might consider itself to be the market leader, but Hortonworks’ Cunitz believes the ODP will soon be in a position to welcome even more companies into its embrace, and that could well turn the tables in its favor. He told ZDNet he expects others to join “over time”, either by signing up as full members of the ODP, or else by partnering with the company to offer the Hortonworks Data Platform, just as Hewlett-Packard Co. has already done.

Cunitz was surprisingly candid when talking about Microsoft’s future involvement in the ODP as well, telling ZDNet there was a real possibility it could join at a later date.

“They may. Don’t read anything into what I’m saying here,” he said. “They are already getting what they would want in terms of driving standardization through our partnership with Microsoft today because they’ve not only adopted the kernel, they’ve adopted all of Hortonworks Data Platform as their standard, their standard inside Azure, their standard inside HDInsight.”

Microsoft might join the ODP one day, but with or without it, Cloudera doesn’t seem to be too concerned. That’s because the company’s business model is “a much more aggressive play” than the strategy being pursued by Hortonworks. Cloudera aims to become the “enterprise data hub” for organizations by selling databases, analytics software and other components in addition to Hadoop – a stark contrast to Hortonwork’s “submissive” strategy of treating Hadoop like an add-on, Reilly said.

As if to underline his point, Reilly quickly pointed to his company’s profits as evidence that its model was more successful. Cloudera claimed more than $100 million in revenues for 2014, more than double the $46 million reported by Hortonworks in its first-ever quarterly financial results, and there’s also the small matter of the $740 million in investment it has received from Intel Corp.

“[We are] the largest privately funded enterprise software company in history,” Reilly boasted.

But even if it’s flush with cash, that’s no guarantee Cloudera will be able to hold on to its leading position. As Hortonworks’ Cunitz pointed out, his company has added 99 new paying customers in the last three months, which is big growth considering it had just 232 total customers in the prior quarter.

“To go from 232 to add 99 in one quarter, you can do the math on the slope of that curve,” Cunitz said. “”We’re in the early stages of it and this is by far from not over for anybody but we’re very comfortable on the direction and the strategy and how this is playing out.”

Image credit: AzDude via Pixabay.com


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