Two of my favorite technology companies, the great American firms Intel Corporation and Cloudera, are now working very strategically together in a way that will have a positive impact on the future of enterprise IT.
For context, see the video at this link and embedded below:
In the video, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich talks about the equity investment and importance of the technology collaboration between Intel and Cloudera. The bottom line here: The leader in data center hardware and high performance computing (Intel) is now strategically teamed with the leader in the big data software platform (Cloudera) to produce a great innovation for developers, users and solution providers across every realm. This is bringing solutions to the mainstream in a way that leverages a standard platform.
What do I look for next? As a CTO I would like to see new documentation, including use cases, reference architectures and repeatable guidance that enterprises and developers can use for this new platform. Both Cloudera and Intel have many reference architectures and use cases available now, but new ones that combine the power of both these firms will be an awesome read. I really can’t wait.
Mike Olson of Cloudera provided some context on what this means strategically in a blog post at Cloudera. He summarized the essence of the news as:
- Intel will replace its own Apache Hadoop-based software distribution with CDH. We’ll transition current customers and partners over a reasonable time period.
- Intel and Cloudera will cooperate to enhance the open source projects that make up CDH so that they take advantage of the power and features of Intel’s chipset. Intel silicon powers 94% of the world’s servers today, so we expect to make life better for an enormous number of users.
- We’ll work together to promote and distribute the software worldwide, directly and through the channels and partnerships we each bring to the relationship.
- Intel Capital has acquired a stake in Cloudera, adding to the funds we announced last week. It’s the largest data center investment in Intel Capital’s history, and the investment makes Intel our largest strategic shareholder.
Mike concludes his post with some important relevance on this news, saying:
Our collaboration means that customers will be able to rationalize their IT spending. They’ll be able to do existing work better, faster and cheaper. More importantly, they’ll be able to attack new workloads, analyzing more data than ever before in ways previously impossible. They’ll get value from data they couldn’t capture before.
Mike’s full blog is here: The Next Ten Years
Also see more from the Intel press release below:
Cloudera, Intel Commit to Accelerate and Transform How Enterprises Use Big Data; Intel Makes Significant Equity Investment in Cloudera
PALO ALTO, Calif., and SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 27, 2014 – Intel Corporation and Cloudera today announced a broad strategic technology and business collaboration, as well as a significant equity investment from Intel making it Cloudera’s largest strategic shareholder and a member of its board of directors. This is Intel’s single largest data center technology investment in its history. The deal will join Cloudera’s leading enterprise analytic data management software powered byApache Hadoop™ with the leading data center architecture based on Intel® Xeon® technology. The goal is acceleration of customer adoption of big data solutions, making it easier for companies of all sizes to obtain increased business value from data by deploying open source Apache Hadoop solutions. Both the strategic collaboration and the equity investment are subject to standard closing conditions, including customary regulatory approvals.
Cloudera will develop and optimize Cloudera’s Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH) for Intel architecture as its preferred platform and support a range of next-generation technologies including Intel fabrics, flash memory and security. In turn, Intel will market and promote CDH and Cloudera Enterprise to its customers as its preferred Hadoop platform. Intel will focus its engineering and marketing resources on the joint roadmap. The optimizations from Intel’s Distribution for Apache Hadoop/Intel Data Platform (IDH/IDP) will be integrated into CDH and IDH/IDP and will be transitioned after v3.1 release at the end of March. To ensure a seamless customer transition to CDH, Intel and Cloudera will work together on a migration path from IDH/IDP. Cloudera will also ensure that all enhancements will be contributed to their respective open source projects and CDH.
The collaboration with Cloudera promises to enhance both Intel data center and Internet of Things (IoT) technology initiatives by enabling customers to manage and analyze machine-generated data from a variety of sources, spanning sensors to gateways and a range of devices.
“By aligning the Cloudera and Intel roadmaps, we are creating the platform of choice for big data analytics,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group. “We expect to accelerate industry adoption of the Hadoop data platform and enable companies to mine their data for insights that inform the business. This collaboration spans our data center technology from compute to network, security and storage, and extends to our initiatives for the Internet of Things.”
Both companies remain committed to the open source community that has been the driving force behind Hadoop. The companies will also execute joint go-to-market strategies that include coordinated product, channel and sales programs.
“Hadoop has changed the entire conversation around data,” said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer, Cloudera. “Based on our ability to store, process and analyze all kinds of data, increasingly in new ways, the potential for advances in business, social and economic environments are vast. Teaming with Intel, the industry leader in data center technology innovation, presents an opportunity for us to layer Hadoop into a platform’s core framework. The result is rapid performance improvements on workloads such as those extracting intelligent insight. Intel’s vision for delivering open, performance optimized solutions for big data is synergistic to our vision to help companies accelerate time to achieving success.”
About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at newsroom.intel.com andblogs.intel.com.
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About Cloudera
Cloudera is revolutionizing enterprise data management by offering the first unified Platform for Big Data: The Enterprise Data Hub. Cloudera offers enterprises one place to store, process and analyze all their data, empowering them to extend the value of existing investments while enabling fundamental new ways to derive value from their data. Founded in 2008, Cloudera was the first and is still today the leading provider and supporter of Hadoop for the enterprise. Cloudera also offers software for business critical data challenges including storage, access, management, analysis, security and search. With over 20,000 individuals trained, Cloudera is a leading educator of data professionals, offering the industry’s broadest array of Hadoop training and certification programs. Cloudera works with over 900 hardware, software and services partners to meet customers’ big data goals. Leading organizations in every industry run Cloudera in production, including finance, telecommunications, retail, internet, utilities, oil and gas, healthcare, biopharmaceuticals, networking and media, plus top public sector organizations globally.http://www.cloudera.com/ www.cloudera.com
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Cloudera, Cloudera’s Platform for Big Data, CLoudera Enterprise Basic Edition, Cloudera Enterprise Flex Edition, Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub Edition and CDH are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cloudera Inc. in the United States, and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.