As recent as 18 months ago, enterprise companies turned to data platforms, such as Hortonworks, Inc., for pilot projects. They saw Big Data as an experiment. Now, the enterprise has moved well beyond pilot implementation.

“We’re talking second- and third-stage implementation,” said Matt Morgan, VP of product and alliance marketing for Hortonworks. “Companies are building apps that add real business value that do things we never thought possible.”

John Furrier (@furrier) and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE media team, spoke with Morgan and Anna Young, director of product marketing for the EP Group at Hortonworks, during the BigDataSV 2016 event in San Jose, California, where theCUBE is celebrating #BigDataWeek, including news and events from the #StrataHadoop conference. The group discussed how the data layer is the new middle layer. Hortonworks adopts this approach depending on the customer’s criteria.

“We see lines of business with apps that have this enormous value,” said Morgan. “They don’t want to discuss complexity. They just want value. We’re being driven to deliver a complete solution with a single platform so developers can create unbelievable apps.”

In response, Hortonworks will release DataFlow (HDF) version 1.2 on March 31. Powered by Apache NiFi, HDF is an integrated platform that collects, conducts and curates real-time data, moving it from any source to any destination.

As Young explained, “We want to make data in motion more frictionless.”

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of BigDataSV 2016. And make sure to weigh in during theCUBE’s live coverage at the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

Photo by SiliconANGLE