Apr 23, 2014
Arnal Dayaratna, Ph.D
Concurrent and Hortonworks recently revealed a deepening of their strategic relationship whereby Cascading SDK will now be integrated into the Hortonworks Data Platform. Moreover, Hortonworks will certify, deliver and support Cascading, the application framework for developing Hadoop-based applications. A Java-based, open source alternative to MapReduce, Cascading provides developers with a framework for constructing complex, repeatable data processing tasks within a Hadoop cluster. Cascading features an abstraction platform which uses plumbing metaphors such as taps, pipes, data flows, cascades and sinks to allow developers to design, visualize and execute jobs and processes on Hadoop-based data without having to master the intricacies of MapReduce. Forthcoming releases of Cascading will support Apache Tez, an initiative that represents the next step after the addition of YARN to Hadoop that allows for Hadoop-based data to “meet demands for fast response times and extreme throughput at petabyte scale.” The partnership between Concurrent, the developer of Cascading, and Hortonworks, represents a huge coup for Concurrent given that the collaboration stands to rapidly accelerate Cascading’s adoption in enterprise environments. Hortonworks, meanwhile, benefits from packaging its Hadoop distribution with Cascading, one of the industry’s most well respected frameworks for Big data management and application development that boasts enterprise users such as Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay and Nokia. The obvious question now is whether Concurrent will finalize similar partnerships with other Hadoop vendors such as Cloudera and MapR or whether Concurrent’s partnership with Hortonworks enables the latter to improve its positioning in the battle for Hadoop market share, particularly in light of Cloudera’s remarkable $900 capital raise and partnership with Intel.