New strategy, Cloudera? Hadoop flinger launches NoSQL database, visualisation tools in head-scratching flurry

For a data company, Cloudera appears to be short on answers. Amid a raft of technology releases, it seems to be trying to insert its muzzle into two well-established markets while questions still remain over its Enterprise Data Cloud, announced more than a year ago. The move to launch a NoSQL key-value database using HBase …

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hardly that surprising. Clouderaworks has always been a significant player in the NoSQL space - historically something like 20-30% of the respective companies' revenues were traced back to HBase and adjacent gubbins (Solr, Phoenix etc.), and usually those NoSQL-centric use cases sit adjacent to more traditional analytical applications driving further linked revenue.

It would have been a much bigger surprise if they didn't launch a NoSQL cloud product, just like it'll be a surprise if they don't launch some form of data engineering-focused product in the near future. Likewise don't let your jaw hit the floor if there's a search or a graph-centric offering. They already sell and support those things extensively on premises and if they don't sell those things on the cloud then their whole value proposition - end to end data lifecycle - falls down.

The question is whether the company can do them _well_ on the cloud. Product quality expectations are radically different when you're buying something billed by the minute and sold at the push of the button. So while being able to do the same stack on your boring old tin as you do your on prem k8s as you do your aws or your Azure or your GCP has a certain value to their customer base, the actual end users expect this stuff to work easily and with minimal fuss.

Engineering "minimal fuss" onto any tech stack that traces its heritage back to the good old days of unsexy on premises Java-based data management tooling is going to be a tricky task.

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC

Sorry, but you're wrong.

You have to separate Cloudera from Apache.

The best example of this goes back to HDFS and CDH3.

Cloudera wanted a bunch of 'improvements' to HDFS that Apache didn't want.

So Cloudera's fork of HDFS diverged from Apache. This is why Rob B. could say that Hortonworks was closer to the Apache release and could be faster to apply patches and upgrades than Cloudera. Also was able to be more reactive to changes. But that's just one example. There are others.

None of the 'examples' you gave... e.g. Phoenix, were driven by Cloudera.

I doubt anyone's jaw will hit the floor when it comes to Cloudera, except when they get their new bill for their software license.

Posted Anon for the obvious reasons and too many people can already figure out who I am.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @AC

Sorry, but this is patent nonsense. I don't work and have never worked at either company - I'm in the SI space adjacent to them. Cloudera's distribution of Apache Hadoop didn't diverge from the upstream version. It lagged it and selectively backported instead of shipping the complete upstream codebase. This is trivially evidenced just by looking at the github page for the product - https://github.com/cloudera/hadoop-common/tree/cdh6.3.3 - there are differences for sure but these amount to backports of items from the upstream master; every substantial patch is drawn from the Apache upstream, otherwise you'd be blocked from using the Apache name for the product. This is exactly how every single open source-centric vendor under the sun operates.

The claim about Phoenix wasn't a claim to Clouderaworks authorship - though their contribution has been significant - simply that the company has been selling commercial support for Phoenix as far back as 2016. Hence you should not be shocked when cloud based versions of the same tooling suddenly appear. Likewise HBase has been a core part of both companies' platforms since time immemorial. So frankly the only surprise about them launching an "operational database" should be that it took them this long.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloudera is dying...

First, even if I post anon, there will be some who can figure out who I am. But at least I have some plausible deniability.

Cloudera has at best 2-3 years before they go belly up.

Cloudera can't escape the same trap that hit Hortonworks as well as MapR. Two different vendors who died for two different reasons.

Cloudera's revenues are up mainly due to the increase in their licensing revenues. Sounds good until you realize that they aren't growing the business but raising the prices. They say its to better align the Hortonworks customers to Cloudera's pricing model. Outside of some MapR customers being converted, where's the growth?

The upside. Short term revenue growth. Downside... as costs increase, going to public cloud vendors looks appealing. Cloudera wants to offer a Hybrid approach, but rather than work with the cloud vendor's K8s native tools, their approach is to use the clouds as IaaS and run CDP on top. Again, here's the increase in revenue but too expensive since Cloud isn't really cheaper for many enterprises.

So while we see the first two positive earnings calls in the history of the company... its a short term gain.

What many fail to see... it takes time to migrate, also many don't want to move to the cloud but are doing so because they have little choice.

Cloud vendors are also making inroads into the Enterprise's data center. (e.g. GCP's Anthos)

Cloudera has until the bulk of their customers jump ship. And that's already starting. It started about a year ago. So you have to ask yourself... how long does it take to migrate from Cloudera?

There's obviously more to the story. But alas, this is a public forum...