Hadoop Happenings: HP Invests $50M In Hortonworks

Hewlett-Packard will "deeply integrate" Hortonworks' Hadoop software with the HP HAVEn big data platform under a strategic partnership the two companies said would accelerate adoption of Apache Hadoop among the vendors' customers.

Under an agreement unveiled Thursday, HP also will make a $50 million equity investment in Hortonworks, and Martin Fink, HP's CTO and executive vice president, will join Hortonworks' board of directors.

The alliance will help customers of the two vendors transition to "a modern data architecture," said Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden.

Related: Cloudera, Hortonworks Move To Expand Their Partner Ecosystems

"Through deep integration with Enterprise Apache Hadoop, HP customers will be able to easily build their next generation of applications with the Hortonworks Data Platform," Bearden said in a statement.

The Hadoop arena has been a hotbed of activity in recent months. Earlier this month systems integrator Accenture formed with an alliance with Hortonworks to collaborate on developing big data solutions for customers. At the same time, systems integrator Capgemini established a similar relationship with Cloudera, a Hortonworks rival that also markets a Hadoop-based platform.

In June Dell and Intel struck up an engineering partnership with Cloudera to develop a series of high-performance big data appliances based on Cloudera Enterprise. That followed Intel's decision in March to acquire an 18 percent stake in Cloudera for $740 million.

The $50 million HP investment in Hortonworks comes on the heels of a $100 million round of venture financing Hortonworks undertook in March.

HAVEn is HP's big data analysis platform that incorporates a number of acquired technologies including Autonomy, Vertica and ArcSight. HAVEn already supports Hadoop, but the integration work HP and Hortonworks are carrying out will make the Hortonworks Data Platform -- which has the open-source Apache Hadoop at its core -- an official Hadoop component of HAVEn.

HP, Palo Alto, Calif., also said it will certify HP Vertica, the vendor's column-oriented database, to work with Apache Hadoop YARN, the resource management technology at the heart of Apache Hadoop 2.0.

"The ability to understand data and put it to effective use is now more crucial than ever," said Colin Mahony, HP Vertica general manager, in a statement. The partnership with Hortonworks will help HP develop big data solutions for its customers, he said.

Having Fink serve on Hortonworks' board also will tighten the relationship between the two companies. As HP's CTO, Fink is responsible for managing HP Labs, the vendor's exploratory and advanced research group. He also leads the company's cloud business and execution of its cloud strategy.

PUBLISHED JULY 24, 2014