MapR Hadoop Gets Blessing From Data Warehouse Giant Teradata

MapR Technologies, maker of one of the most popular distributions of Apache Hadoop, got a major boost Wednesday with $2.7 billion data warehousing giant Teradata tightly integrating the MapR distribution into the Teradata unified data architecture.

The Teradata agreement represents a MapR Hadoop blessing from one of the pioneers in data warehousing, a precursor to the big data explosion that has been driven by combining Apache Hadoop with data analytics to give companies realtime data insights.

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"This is a validation of the big data story that we have been telling our customers about for the last 18 months," said Juan Guevara, big data practice director for Trace3, which is experiencing robust growth for big data solutions based on distributions of Apache Hadoop from the likes of MapR. "This could absolutely expand the market for MapR Hadoop."

Trace3, which was named Cisco's Innovation Partner of the Year in the United States this year, saw a turning point for its big data practice in the third quarter, hitting 90 percent of its sales quota during that period with an emphasis on data warehouse optimization for Fortune 1000 customers.

Guevara expects that explosive growth, which is being driven by astronomical cost savings for customers moving to Hadoop-based big data solutions, to continue into 2015. "We are looking at 2015 as a home-run year for big data," he said.

Teradata, for its part, was seeing significant market demand for the MapR Hadoop distribution from its customers. "Our customers were saying, 'Look, I have chosen Teradata as best-in-class data warehousing; I have chosen MapR as best-in-class Hadoop infrastructure. I want you guys to integrate those together,'" said Teradata Vice President of Product and Services Marketing Chris Twogood. "Amongst our customers, 90 percent of them were saying we want tighter integration."

MapR Chief Marketing Officer Jack Norris said the Teradata partnership opens up new ways for customers to "leverage big data" in their existing data warehouse environments. "This opens a lot of opportunities for partners," he said. "Data warehouse augmentation is one of the most common starting points for companies. It represents a big potential for big data."

As for just what kind of traction MapR is making in the channel, Norris said the company is seeing significant growth among systems integrators. "It is a very fast-growing piece of our business," he said. "We have hundreds of partners, and it is growing quickly."

Teradata has already delivered a connector for command-line, batch-data movement to and from MapR. What's more, the data-warehousing giant has already started work on a QueryGrid connection to access data from MapR. Under the expanded pact, Teradata also now can resell MapR software, professional services and provide customer support.

Teradata's portfolio is experiencing double-digit growth with partners, including large systems integrators, providing additional data warehousing services, or business intelligence and data-modeling tools, said Twogood.

In addition,Teradata now is offering cloud-based pay-as-you-go data-warehousing solutions that have opened up more opportunities for partners, said Twogood. "That starts to really change a lot of the dynamics on how people, partners and customers consume this technology," he said.

Nevertheless, Teradata is still a direct-sales-oriented company. "We have a growing partner ecosystem, but [are] still predominately direct sales," said Twogood.

PUBLISHED NOV. 19, 2014