Rackspace has cut a strategic agreement with Hortonworks, the open source Apache Hadoop start-up, to resell its platform.
The two are also going to try to eliminate the complexities and time-consuming manual processes in Hadoop required to implement a Big Data solution.
The announcement says the “joint effort will pursue an OpenStack-based Hadoop solution for the public and private cloud, which can easily be deployed in minutes.”
Gartner figures Big Data will drive $232 billion in IT spending through 2016.
Rackspace CTO John Engates allowed in a statement that “Running Hadoop on your own is complex, which is why we’re excited about our development efforts with Hortonworks. We believe Hortonworks as a collaborator brings a substantial advantage in technology, services and experience that will clearly benefit customers. We have customers today that deploy Hadoop clusters on dedicated hardware at Rackspace with support from Hortonworks. By joining forces, we intend to turn Hadoop into an on-demand service running on the Rackspace open cloud and in clusters on private cloud infrastructure in our data centers or the customer’s data center. The Hortonworks Data Platform packages the open source Apache version of Hadoop. That aligns with our vision of an open cloud future that eliminates fear of vendor lock-in, and allows customers to confidently invest in a technology for the long term.”