Pivotal, Hortonworks Join Forces on Hadoop

Cloud-based big data provider Pivotal Software and Hortonworks announced the addition of a key component of Pivotal’s Big Data Suite to the Hortonworks’ Hadoop platform.

The partners said this week customers investing in Hortonworks’ Data Platform could now run version 1.3 of Pivotal’s HAWQ, an advanced SQL-on-Hadoop engine. The deal expands on Pivotal’s previously announced plans to partner with Hortonworks on enterprise data management and analytics.

The deal also marks the first time HAWQ features have been released outside of Pivotal as it implements an Open Data Platform initiative to leverage technologies like Hadoop across different providers. HAWQ was originally developed from Pivotal’s Greenplum Database before it was extended to handle Apache Hadoop workloads.

With its Hortonworks Data Platform certification, Pivotal added that HAWQ now offers full SQL compliance for analytical workloads while addressing enterprise analytics needs beyond the traditional Hadoop stack.

The Hortonworks data platform is designed to enable a centralized architecture for running batch, interactive and real-time analytics and data processing applications simultaneously across shared datasets. The platform is built on Apache Hadoop and powered by YARN. It is also supported by shared services.

San Francisco-based Pivotal also said collaboration with Hortonworks on HAWQ provides deeper integration with the Apache Hadoop ecosystem while adding new management support for Apache Ambari. Taking advantage of Apache Ambari’s means HAWQ can also be managed alongside other elements of the Hortonworks Data Platform, observers noted.

Pivotal added that HAWQ appears like a Hadoop service inside of Apache Ambari. “This enables Apache Ambari to manage the complete solution consisting of Hadoop components and HAWQ using one portal and interface,” the company noted in a blog post.

The latest release of HAWQ “is about minimizing the burdens of integration, configuration and management of the big data stack so that enterprises can focus on solving the business problem at hand as opposed to the integration problem at hand,” Pivotal added.

Along with added support for Apache Ambari, Pivotal HAWQ moves away from a proprietary management and configuration framework to an open source, Hadoop-native environment. Pivotal claimed that would reduce the total cost of ownership in managing the Hadoop stack, including Pivotal HAWQ.

Ultimately, the partnership brings Pivotal HAWQ “closer to a common Hadoop core,” Sundeep Madra, vice president of Pivotal’s Data Product Group, said in a statement.

“The certification of Pivotal HAWQ on [Hortonworks Data Platform] gives our customers enterprise-grade maturity in SQL-based analytics,” added John Kreisa, Hortonworks’ vice president of strategic marketing.

Pivotal said HAWQ could be deployed on the Hortonworks Data Platform by purchasing Pivotal Big Data Suite flex licenses from Pivotal and licensing the data platform from Hortonworks. Pivotal said it would continue to support HAWQ on its own Hadoop distribution through a Big Data Suite license.

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