EMC is now the second big vendor that has an analytics platform for analyzing both structured and unstructured data, following a Thursday announcement. The upcoming Unified Analytics Platform is a combination of technology from Greenplum and MapR, a Hadoop distributor that already has a strong partnership with EMC.

UAP combines the EMC Greenplum database with MapR’s Hadoop distro and a version of Greenplum Chorus specifically designed for the new offering. Chorus adds a social layer to DBs in order to provide a platform via which people of different roles working on a big data deployment can better collaborate.

“With the introduction of the EMC Greenplum Unified Analytics Platform, EMC is delivering the keys to helping organizations extract the most value out of vast amounts of data and create more agile, data-savvy businesses,” said Scott Yara, co-founder and senior vice president of products for Greenplum. “We think that analytics are the key to success in the big data era.”

UAP will start shipping in the first quarter of 2012, though there’s no word on pricing yet.  The platform’s ability to munch on both of the categories of data collected by organizations today and process it at scale gives it an edge, though EMC is not the first one to recognize the potential of such an offering.

Last month Hewlett-Packard revealed its own hybrid data analytics solution, IDOL 10, which was also the first product to come out of the company’s massive $10 billion acquisition of the British firm.  Customers can process, store and analyze their data thanks to another combination of technologies from different brand names: Autonomy’s IDOL and Vertica’s DB.  The Unified Analytics Platform and the latest IDOL release are the first solutions of their kind, but they’re entering a crowded arena where many other companies are already into the race.