Cloudera literally aroused wonder at Strata Conference + Hadoop Worldlast fall when it announced its Enterprise Data Hub (EDH) strategy. Standing before a packed house at the conference in New York City, the company’s co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Mike Olson proclaimed that Hadoop was moving from the periphery to the architectural center of the data center. It is now not only a place where data destined for Hadoop processing can land, but also where all enterprise data, without discrimination, can be efficiently and securely stored, processed, analyzed and delivered on demand to special purpose systems for further processing.
It’s important to note that this wasn’t so much Cloudera’svision for how information would be managed at some point in the future, it was something that some ofthe company’s clients were already doing, or showing interest in doing. And a good part of how they were making this happen was via Cloudera Enterprise and the advanced data management solutions that Cloudera had built around it.
The aforementioned had “grown organically” in response to what customers needed, according to Matt Brandwein, director, product marketing at Cloudera. The support subscriptions were paid for a la carte.
Cloudera’s Customer Attuned Enterprise Play
When Cloudera went to market with its EDH offering, it learned two very interesting things: first, that enterprises were eager to get on board with the new architecture (they sold eight data hubs in six weeks) and second, that customers felt that the consumption model for Cloudera’s enterprise-gradeofferings was confusing.
Needless to say, the company saw the latter as a problem, and one that needed to be fixed in short order. So they took a step back to look at customer buying patterns and found three primary consumption models:
- Customers who were usingCloudera’s coreHadoop distribution (CDH), Cloudera Manager and support services (no proprietary products in this model)
- Customers who were using core Hadoop, Cloudera Manager and an additional premium advanced data management technology (for purposes such as ad serving)
- Customers who were using all, or almost all, that Cloudera had to offer (which often resulted in what is now the full-blown Enterprise Data Hub)
Cloudera Introduces New Packaging and Pricing
In response to those findings, Cloudera today introduces three editions of Cloudera Enterprise, each with their own packaging and pricing:
- Data Hub Edition, which -- as the name implies -- provides everything customers need to build an enterprise data hub, ready to integrate into an existing environment. It includes unlimited supported use of components in Cloudera Enterprise:
- Cloudera Impala for interactive analytic SQL queries
- Cloudera Search for interactive search
- Cloudera Navigator for data management including data auditing, lineage and discovery
- Apache Spark (incubating) for interactive analytics and stream processing (more on this in a minute)
- Apache HBase or Apache Accumulo for online NoSQL storage and application
- Flex Edition, for supporting dedicated mission critical applications on Hadoop, using only one of the above components. For example, if building a real time ad serving platform on HBase.
- Basic Edition, for customers who rely on Cloudera for Hadoop in production environments, yet need only simple batch processing and storage, at an economical price.
'Inside Every Box'
Brandwein notes that every edition includes CDH, Cloudera’s 100 percent open source distribution including Apache Hadoop as well as Cloudera's unique proactive and predictive support and advanced system management.
Automated backup and disaster recovery are included in every edition of Cloudera Enterprise as well.
“We just don't think Hadoop makes sense in the enterprise without it,” says Brandwein.
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As Much Support as You Need (or are willing to pay for)
In addition to a choice of 8/5 or 24/7 support, Cloudera said it will now offer an additional premium support tier that delivers 24/7 support plus a guaranteed 15-minute time to first response for critical issues.
Cloudera Finds its Way to the Enterprise Data Management Table with Giants
“We are not just another database sitting on top of Hadoop,” says Brandwein, explaining that its Enterprise Data Hub play changes the game not only for Hadoop vendors but for established industry leaders as well. “SQL is one way (to leverage data). SAS is another, Revolution another …,” he went on. “With an Enterprise Data Hub you can do all these things in one place.”
And as such, Cloudera says that this positions them as a viable alternative to Teradata (Hortonworks HDP plus Aster), IBM (Netezza plus BigInsights), Pivotal (Hadoop plus HAWQ) and theoretically Oracle, which Brandwein left unsaid.
Time Will Tell
The big vendors will, no doubt, say that Cloudera has a long way to go before it becomes a contender, but well-respected analysts question the viability of the aforementioned “giants” in computing’s third era.
Time will tell. Until then, what’s your bet? Ten years from now will we work in a world of enterprise data hubs and will Cloudera be known as a pioneer?
Title image by Arun Roisri (Shutterstock)
