In February, Hortonworks Inc. announced general availability of DataFlow 3.1, the company’s data-in-motion platform for edge and streaming analytics. The release provided further evidence that Hortonworks intends to include edge computing in its competitive strategy for the Apache Hadoop market.

“That certainly has to be a part of our strategy because it is part of what our customers are doing,” said Alan Gates (pictured), co-founder of Hortonworks. “Our goal is to help our customers with their data wherever it is.”

Gates spoke with James Kobielus (@jameskobielus), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the DataWorks Summit EU in Berlin, Germany. They discussed the role of Apache Nifi and Kafka in the streaming strategy and Hortonworks’ involvement in a big data standards initiative. (* Disclosure below.)

Focused on data in motion

Hortonworks DataFlow is an integrated solution with Apache Nifi and Apache Kafka, both of which can be focused on data in motion. “Nifi is really focused on that data at the edge,” Gates explained. “You need to figure out what parts of the data to move upstream, what parts not to.”

Kafka will likely continue to run in data centers, according to the Hortonworks co-founder, playing more of a role to monitor the information coming in via Nifi. “It’s still a pretty heavyweight technology in terms of memory,” Gates said.

Hortonworks had been committed for several years to the Open Data Platform initiative, or ODPi. The nonprofit organization was formed to simplify and standardize the big data ecosystem. Gates manages the technical relationship with ODPi.

“We do want to build it around Apache Atlas,” Gates said. “We want to do it in an open way so [customers] can still plug in their data repositories and communicate with others.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the DataWorks Summit EU. (* Disclosure: Hortonworks Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Hortonworks nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE