Bilot announced on July 4, 2014 that it has joined the Hortonworks Systems Integrator Partner Program as Hortonwork’s first partner in Finland and will be delivering big data solutions powered by Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP). Hortonworks is the only 100% open source software provider to develop, distribute and support an Apache Hadoop platform explicitly architected, built and tested for enterprise-grade deployments.
Below a Q&A around this news exploring the move in further detail:
Why did Bilot choose to partner with Hortonworks?
Hadoop has quickly become an industry standard in big data, and Hortonworks is the leading contributor to and provider of Hadoop. Hortonworks has done a great job in translating the Apache Hadoop open source project to a serious enterprise-level platform i.e. the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP).
By partnering with Hortonworks, we strengthen our ability to implement enterprise-level big data in large installations that require storing and analyzing large amounts of both structured and unstructured data. With HDP, we can be sure to deliver our enterprise customers with best-in-class Hadoop solution, integration, and support.
From Bilot’s standpoint, why is Hortonworks a better partner than some of the other Hadoop providers on the market?
I see three key strengths that distinguish Hortonworks from other players from our standpoint:
(1) Bilot is known for its expertise in delivering great enterprise solutions using SAP and Microsoft products. Hortonworks Data Platform is the only product on the market supporting Hadoop for Microsoft Windows Azure and Windows Server. HDP is also designed to integrate particularly well with SAP HANA, our key platform and appliance for practical big data solutions. Hence, there is great synergy from both an architecture and a go-to-market perspective between Bilot and Hortonworks.
(2) Hortonworks develops its product always 100% with the open source community. Hortonworks is particularly active in driving enterprise requirements in the open source community and is probably the largest single contributor in the actual development of Enterprise Hadoop. Hence, with HDP, our customers get a platform and direct support from the very same people that were responsible for developing the Enterprise Hadoop in the first place!
(3) Another benefit from keeping the Hortonworks platform as close to the open source project as possible is that there is little vendor lock in. In contrast, other players in the enterprise Hadoop field only provide their own modified version of the original open source Hadoop project. Always staying at the cutting edge of Hadoop while not having a vendor lock in is an important point to many of our customers.
How does this fit in Bilot’s offering?
As Bilot is venturing increasingly into big data – particularly from a practical big data standpoint – capabilities to integrate seamlessly with Hadoop becomes important. Our BI and analytics offering will be greatly enhanced with the ability to offer Hadoop integration to our customers’ other platforms such as SAP HANA.
Why should Bilot’s customers be interested in big data, Hadoop and SAP HANA?
Big data provides benefits to enterprises that cannot be captured with the use of traditional analytics and BI. We at Bilot like to approach big data from a practical standpoint, where big data is not an academic exercise, but instead delivers results and real-life frontline applications fast. This means that the integration between the big data storage, analytical appliances, production systems, and frontline applications needs to be seamless and real-time. An integrated solution with SAP HANA and Hadoop achieves this.
If SAP HANA and Hadoop are both great big data platforms, why would you need both?
As an extreme simplification, I would like to think of it as comparing a Porsche and a Mack truck: both are great in their own right, but serve a very different purpose. Hadoop is the Mack truck i.e. great for storing a large amount of varied data, but slower on real-time analysis that needs to integrate with other applications. On the other hand, SAP HANA is like the Porsche i.e. fast in real-time analytics and integration to frontline applications, but impractical and costly for storing very large amounts of data, especially if unstructured. If you are serious about doing real-time business and practical big data, you cannot live without the speed (=SAP HANA), but may also need Hadoop to store and analyze all of the data collected.
When can Bilot’s customers start using Hadoop together with SAP HANA?
We will be piloting Hadoop (Hortonworks Data Platform) with SAP HANA during fall 2014 and will have full readiness to integrate customers’ SAP HANA platforms with HDP by end of 2014.
