The Forrester Wave™: Big Data Hadoop Solutions, Q1 2014: Key Takeaways
The Forrester Wave™: Big Data Hadoop Solutions, Q1 2014: Key Takeaways
, Technographics
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15%
35%
35%
15%
0%
30%
60%
10%
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).
VENDOR PROFILES
Leaders
Amazon Web Services is king of the cloud. AWSs Elastic MapReduce (EMR) leverages its
comprehensive cloud services, such as Amazon EC2 for compute, Amazon S3 for storage, and
other services, to ofer a very strong Hadoop solution for customers that wish to implement
Hadoop in the cloud. Its EMR has already achieved considerable adoption and had the highest
score for market presence in this evaluation. AWSs solution road map includes Amazon EMR
integration with Amazon Kinesis for stream processing; stronger integration with Amazon
Redshif data warehouse and other data sources; autoscaling that will resize clusters based on
policies; support for additional NoSQL databases on top of Hadoop; and more BI integration
with third-party vendors. AWS has a wide range of partners for Hadoop data access/query,
modeling and development, data integration, cluster management, and business applications.
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Cloudera innovates to meet enterprise demands. Enterprise customers wanted a management
and monitoring tool for Hadoop, so Cloudera built Cloudera Manager. Enterprise customers
wanted a faster SQL engine for Hadoop, so Cloudera built Impala using a massively parallel
processing (MPP) architecture the same architecture that EDWs use. Clouderas approach to
innovation is to be loyal to core Hadoop but to innovate quickly and aggressively to meet customer
demands and diferentiate its solution from those of other vendors. Cloudera has more than 200
paying customers, some of which are fairly large deployments with more than a thousand nodes
supporting more than a petabyte of data. Clouderas solution road map will make its Hadoop
solution signifcantly more competitive by meeting customers demands. It has strong partnerships
with other technology vendors in most of the areas in which its own portfolio lacks an ofering.
Hortonworks loves and lives open source innovation. Hortonworks strategy is to drive all
innovation through the open source community and create an ecosystem of partners that
accelerate Hadoop adoption among enterprises. Where the open source community isnt
moving fast enough, Hortonworks will start new projects and commit Hortonworks resources
to get them of the ground. For example, Apache Hadoop lacked a decent cluster management
console, so Hortonworks founded Ambari and employs most of its committers. Hortonworks
has also landed some key strategic partnerships, including Teradata (also in this evaluation),
Microsof (also in this evaluation), SAP, and others.
IBM fexes its enterprise muscles with InfoSphere BigInsights. Distributed computing
platforms and data management are certainly not new to IBM. It has oferings in grid computing,
databases, and many other data management technologies that it can bring to a comprehensive
Hadoop solution. In addition, IBM has advanced analytics tools, a global presence, and
implementation services, so it can ofer a complete big data solution that will be attractive to
many customers. IBMs road map includes continuing to integrate the BigInsights Hadoop
solution with related IBM assets like SPSS advanced analytics, workload management for high-
performance computing, BI tools, and data management and modeling tools. Today, IBM has
more than 100 Hadoop deployments, some of which are fairly large and run to petabytes of data.
MapR Technologies scored highest for its current ofering of all the vendors. Te score
speaks for itself. MapR Technologies has added some unique innovations to its Hadoop
distribution, including support for Network File System (NFS), running arbitrary code in the
cluster, performance enhancements for HBase, as well as high-availability and disaster recovery
features. However, MapR Technologies has lagged behind the other pure-play vendors, Cloudera
and Hortonworks, in terms of market awareness; Forrester clients ofen ask about Cloudera and
Hortonworks but not about MapR Technologies. MapR Technologies has a leading solution; it
must now make more noise in the market and accelerate its partnerships and distribution channels.
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Pivotal Sofware puts its Greenplum engineers to work. Pivotal has its own Hadoop
distribution, including a massively parallel processing (MPP) Hadoop SQL engine called
HAWQ, which ofers MPP-like SQL performance on Hadoop. Pivotal was the frst EDW vendor
to provide a full-featured enterprise-grade Hadoop appliance; it was also the frst to roll out an
appliance family that integrated its Hadoop, EDW, and data management layers in a single rack.
Pivotals road map will make its Hadoop solution signifcantly more competitive; its innovations
focus on improving the HAWQ SQL engine and integration with other Pivotal products. Pivotal
has less than 100 Hadoop customers and most are typically small to midsize deployments. It has
an extensive professional services force of EMC technical consultants and data scientists with
Hadoop expertise as well as partnerships with complementary solution vendors.
Teradata aims to ofer the best Hadoop appliance. Leveraging its expertise in EDW appliances
and partnership with Hortonworks, Teradata has moved aggressively to ofer Hadoop solutions
as an appliance. Te Teradata distribution for Hadoop includes integration with Teradatas
management tool and SQL-H, a federated SQL engine that lets customers query data from its data
warehouse and Hadoop. It also has Aster for analytics against Hadoop. Although Teradata has
fewer than 100 customers, Teradatas extensive fnancial, technical, and management resources can
create a unique, high-performance Hadoop appliance that few other vendors can match.
Strong Performers
Intel is late to the game but has unique innovations. Intel only recently entered the Hadoop
market with its own Hadoop distribution, which takes advantage of the capabilities of Intel
Xeon chips. It is the frst vendor to deliver hardware-enhanced performance and security
capabilities for Hadoop. Intels road map in the next year will bring it closer to and on par
with other vendors in the Hadoop solutions market. In addition, Intel continues to focus on
hardware-enhanced performance and security features, native task optimization, Lustre, and
graph analytics, which will diferentiate its distribution and make it attractive to prospects.
Microsof starts with a cloud solution and makes Hadoop shine on Windows. Microsofs
Windows Azure HDInsight is based on the Hortonworks Data Platform and is exclusively
designed and ofered for Windows Azure cloud. Microsof has worked closely with the
Hadoop community and Hortonworks to release Hadoop for Windows. Microsof also ofers
Polybase to allow SQL Server customers to execute queries that also include data stored
in Hadoop. Microsof has signifcant engineering eforts on other open source community
Hadoop subprojects, including the next generation of Hive. Microsofs signifcant presence in
the database, data warehouse, cloud, OLAP, BI, spreadsheet (PowerPivot), collaboration, and
development tools markets ofers an advantage when it comes to delivering a growing Hadoop
stack to Microsof customers.
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2014, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited February 27, 2014
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Online Resource
Te online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed
product evaluations and customizable rankings.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each solution:
Product demos. Vendors spent 1 hour with a team of analysts who performed a hands-on
evaluation of the product using a guided demo methodology. We evaluated each product
using the same methodology, thus creating a level playing feld by evaluating every product
on the same criteria.
Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where
necessary to gather details of vendor qualifcations.
Customer reference calls. To validate product and vendor qualifcations, Forrester also conducted
reference calls with at least two of each vendors current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated
in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our fnal list. We choose these
vendors based on: 1) product ft; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate
vendors that have limited customer references and products that dont ft the scope of our evaluation.
Afer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria,
we gather details of product qualifcations through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review,
and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor oferings and strategies.
We set default weightings to refect our analysis of the needs of large user companies and/or
other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document and then score the vendors based
on a clearly defned scale. Tese default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we
encourage readers to adapt the weightings to ft their individual needs through the Excel-based
tool. Te fnal scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current ofering,
strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product
capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.
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The Forrester Wave: Big Data Hadoop Solutions, Q1 2014 13
2014, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited February 27, 2014
ENDNOTES
1
At the center of the architecture is a data hub (or lake) that serves as a central location for raw, detailed data.
Many frms choose an open source platform like Hadoop because of its low cost and treatment of data in
an unstructured manner. See the June 12, 2013, Deliver On Big Data Potential With A Hub-And-Spoke
Architecture report.
2
Source: Forrsights Sofware Survey, Q4 2013.
3
Source: Forrsights Strategy Spotlight: Business Intelligence And Big Data, Q4 2012.
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