UPDATED 17:18 EDT / APRIL 18 2016

Clarfication on my comments on Cloudera on theCUBE at #HadoopSummit

downloadI was in Dublin this week broadcasting live on #theCUBE at the Hadoop Summit event. It’s customary that at the end of each day, I and my co-host (Dave Vellante in this case) wrap up each day with an editorial and opinion segment where we summarize, analyze, opine and connect the dots on what we see from the data and conversations on theCUBE and at the event in general. The wrap up is our most watched segment at every event and is designed to convey strong opinions with critical analysis.

During the Day 1 wrap this week, one of the highlights we created caused some friction because I made some remarks about Cloudera and its relationship to its community. One statement was incorrect and the other was taken out of context and could potentially be used against Cloudera in a way that is unfair. That was never my intent and I want to clarify the record.

As many know @theCube is SiliconANGLE’s flagship program where we go out to events to extract the signal from the noise.  TheCUBE is on it’s 7th season and we’ve done more than four thousand live interviews at top industry events.   We broadcast all day to maximize our ability to get top voices documented and shared.  We have a new feature called #CubeGems where our editorial staff listen to the interviews and create instant highlights (usually 45 sec to 1.5 mins) and place that video highlight natively on Twitter in near real-time; and then send it to the event #hashtag. Here is an example of a cubegem from an interview I recently did with Oracle CEO Mark Hurd:

The idea behind #CubeGems is to give listeners a quick takeaway. The problem is that sometimes the short nature of the clip doesn’t convey the full context of the conversation. We see this all the time where a media outlet takes a snippet out of context and blows up a story with very different or often distorted factual basis. This was not our objective.

In this case the highlight sounds really bad toward Cloudera when in reality, the conversation context was about O’Reilly Media taking over the management and control of Cloudera’s conference, Hadoop World, and merging with its own Strata events. The result became Strata+Hadoop a combination of O’Reilly’s relatively newer Strata event and the original core Hadoop World community that started in 2009. Cloudera incubated this community and it became a catalyst for today’s ecosystem that now is shared by Hortonworks and Cloudera/O’Reilly (MapR, the other major Hadoop distributor, doesn’t do a big customer event).

If you watch the full conversation (skip ahead to 3:45 for the relevant discussion) you’ll get the context of my analysis. I stand by the spirit of my opinion in that segment but specific comments were unfair to Cloudera and some statements contained inaccurate information, especially if taken out of context.  The CubeGem was a sound bite which didn’t represent the story, and after talking to Mike Olson, co-founder and Chairman of Cloudera, I would like to clarify and retract some statements that actually aren’t true.

Day 1 Wrap Up – Video


Clarification #1:  I implied/stated that Cloudera basically sold out to O’Reilly who are under contract to run that show for Cloudera.

This is incorrect.

Cloudera never “sold-out “ to O’Reilly.  According to Mike Olson, Cloudera agreed to give to O’Reilly the rights to manage the show and run the event, which includes the content and distribution rights. Cloudera is a co-producer of the event and has significant input to the content and agenda, as do others in the Hadoop community, according to Olson. In the merged arrangement, Cloudera also got the benefit of participating more directly in O’Reilly’s Strata event activities. Olson stated to me that Cloudera doesn’t profit from the event monetization—implying O’Reilly keeps the profits.

Clarification #2:  I said on theCUBE that Cloudera lost the community.

This comment was meant to be in context to Hadoop World and it’s my bad for not being more clear. That #CubeGem statement is not true. This is where the short highlight #CubeGem, taken as a standalone statement, is unfair to Cloudera. Just before the clip started, it was clear I was referring to how Cloudera, as the company that created and built the original Hadoop community, handed over the keys of the kingdom to O’Reilly.

The fact is I clearly understand and agree that Cloudera is a community-driven company and a pioneer, major committer, contributor and innovator within the Hadoop/Big Data ecosystem. That should not be questioned. Cloudera created the Big Data movement before anyone was talking about Hadoop broadly. I’ve always recognized this and continue to recognize Cloudera’s community leadership today. I do however stand by the spirit of my assessment in the context of Hadoop World, now Strata+Hadoop.

I contend that Cloudera, which created, nurtured and grew the original core Hadoop community, which convened in the form of Hadoop World every year, essentially gave this base to O’Reilly without nearly enough reciprocal value. This opinion is shared by many people. I have frequently expressed my opinion that for Cloudera to cede control of the Hadoop World event community to O’Reilly was a strategic mistake.

In this sense, in my opinion, Cloudera lost the community leadership in the context of what was Hadoop World—one of the best up and coming events around. Cloudera emphasizes that it still has major input to the content and agenda, as do others in the community, but in my view they play a distant second fiddle to O’Reilly. Very few people refer to Hadoop World any more. Nearly everyone calls it Strata. Very rarely do attendees say “Strata+Hadoop” – the event is Strata. Strata NYC…Strata San Jose…Strata London, etc. The Web site is strataconf.com, the original O’Reilly Strata URL.

In my opinion, O’Reilly has usurped Cloudera’s leadership in the context of this event and it is my view this was a bad deal for Cloudera. That is what I meant to convey, not that Cloudera had lost its community in general. Reasonable people can disagree on the merits of Cloudera’s decision. I believe every leading company in the tech business must have its own customer event where it directs the content agenda, leads the conversation, writes the narrative, invites analysts/media and profits in many ways.

That’s my opinion and I apologize to Cloudera that what I said on theCUBE was taken out of context in a short snippet (by a team I manage) and in a way that could be used against them.  We’ve decided to take down the #CubeGem so it won’t be used out of context.

Cloudera is an inclusive company, but O’Reilly Media is not (see Disclosure below).

DISCLOSURE: In 2010 and each year until 2013, theCUBE was invited to broadcast live from the Hadoop World show floor. After O’Reilly Media and Cloudera consolidated Strata and Hadoop World, theCUBE was banned from the merged event in 2013.


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