Hortonworks Revolutionizes Storage & Processing of Big Data

In June 2011 Hortonworks was formed by Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital in order to revolutionize and commoditize the storage and processing of big data via open source. They believe that Apache Hadoop will be the main data storage system in the world and Hortonworks wants to make data within Hadoop easier to consume. 

Their goal is to remove current technology and knowledge gaps and to help Hadoop gain mass adoption among companies. Hortonworks makes Hadoop more robust, easier to install, to integrate and to manage. They also provide support and training for Apache Hadoop and they offer regular online seminars. 

Hortonworks is a 100% open source data management platform based on Apache Hadoop. It allows companies to capture, process and share data in any format at scale. The Hortonworks data platform helps companies to uncover business insights from the massive amounts of available data within a company. 

The platform can deal with all kinds of data, regardless of source and format. It is an open, stable and extensible platform ensuring an easy integration of Hadoop with existing data architecture. The Hortonworks Data Platform works by running important Hadoop services on virtual machines. If a virtual machine fails, the product is moved to another box instantly. In contrast, all other commercial Hadoop distributors offer a fault tolerance. 

The Hortonworks Data Platform also includes a cluster-management tool called Ambari and a storage management service HCatalog. HCatalog provides and easy link between Hadoop and other data management systems. It also ensures interoperability across different Hadoop-specific languages. We give them a 8 bits rating.