Most technology vendors are keen to ‘steal’ customers from rival companies, but the complexity of software installations means that it’s difficult to do so, because most enterprises just don’t feel it’s worth all the hassle. At least, that’s how it used to be, but now some vendors have taken it upon themselves to make migrating to a new platform an almost effortless task.

Once such vendor is MapR Technologies Inc., whose Converged Data Platform offering integrates Hadoop and Spark with real-time database capabilities, global event streaming, and scalable enterprise storage. This week, at SAP SE’s SAPPHIRE NOW 2016 conference in Orlando, Florida, MapR introduced a new Quick Start Migration Service that’s designed to let companies switch over from alternative Hadoop distributions to its own quickly and easily.

MapR says its tool can help companies to migrate to its Converged Data Platform no matter how complex their installations are, whether it’s a single workload on just a few nodes, or huge clusters with hundreds of nodes. Among its impressive boasts are claims of zero downtime and zero risk of any data loss during the migration. It works by maintaining operation of the customer’s existing distribution during the transition to MapR, and only switches to the new platform once everything has been fully migrated.

“As organizations continue to gain experience with Hadoop, they increasingly look for technologies with the enterprise-grade features they need to deploy mission-critical applications,” said Dave Jespersen, vice president of worldwide services, MapR Technologies. “With this in mind, we created the ‘easy button’ for moving to MapR. We want customers to be able to make the decision to migrate with confidence and use the platform that best fits their needs. The new Quick Start Migration Service is designed to enable enterprises to move their data with minimal impact to applications or workflows.”

As to why customers might want to switch to MapR, the company points to a recent study by International Data Corp. (IDC), which says customers have achieved an average three-year return on investment of 382 percent, realizing over $20 million in business benefits as a result of their migration.

MapR is also hoping to temp organizations that are interested in using a new Cisco Systems Ltd. appliance which makes it easier to harness the power of big data, simplify deployment, speed time-to-market, and reduce operational expenses. Cisco’s new appliance is designed for the SAP HANA platform, which integrates MapR’s own Converged Data Platform.

MapR claims that several customers have already used its Quick Start Migration Service successfully, including a large financial institution with an operational application involving Hbase; a well-known marketing automation company; and a large government agency project affecting millions of citizens.

MapR’s Quick Start Migration Service went live yesterday, and is being demonstrated this week in MapR’s booth at SAPPHIRE NOW this week.

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