Big data analytics market leaders Hortonworks, IBM and EMC Pivotal are competitors for business deals, but they also realize that there are major benefits in having their platforms align with each other.
At the Hadoop Summit Europe conference in Brussels, Belgium, April 16, the companies announced that their Hadoop-based platforms are now aligned on a common Open Data Platform core of Apache Hadoop 2.6 and Apache Ambari software. The agreement also includes HDFS, YARN and MapReduce.
The ODP initiative is an industry effort focused on simplifying adoption of Apache Hadoop for the enterprise, thus enabling big data solutions to flourish through improved ecosystem interoperability. ODP relies on the governance of the Apache Software Foundation community to innovate and deliver the Apache project technologies included in the ODP core.
This milestone is a clear indication of progress made by the ODP members on their promise to speed Hadoop adoption by delivering compatible solutions that improve interoperability and unlock customer choice.
Hortonworks Data Platform 2.2, IBM Open Platform 4.0 with Apache Hadoop and Pivotal HD 3.0 are all based on the common ODP core and are available today. The new harmonization alleviates compatibility issues and eases the testing and validation burden for enterprise customers as the entire big data ecosystem can now integrate with a common and predictable core platform.
The ODP initiative allows enterprises and ecosystem vendors alike to verify once and run anywhere across their preferred big data infrastructure deployments. As ecosystem and solution providers create value from Hadoop through the ODP’s ongoing efforts, enterprise customers will see the benefits of increased choice with more big data applications and solutions.
Members of the ODP initiative include GE, Hortonworks, IBM, Infosys, Pivotal, SAS, Altiscale, Capgemini, CenturyLink, EMC, PLDT, Splunk, Teradata, Verizon, VMware and WANdisco.
Editor’s note: There are different schools of thought on the ODP, however. Here’s one of them, as espoused by longtime open source advocate and Open Source Business Conference founder Matt Asay.