Yahoo is planning on spinning off its Apache Hadoop commercialization and development unit into a new company, dubbed HortonWorks, according to GigaOm’s Derrick Harris. The struggling Internet giant is expected to make an announcement later this week.
Sources told Harris that the new company will be run by a small group of Yahoo Hadoop engineers who will be working to build next-generation features and functionality into the open source software framework, which Yahoo contributed 70 percent of the code to and uses significantly in their own Web operations.
By creating its own commercial company based on Hadoop – a framework used to process unstructured data in the cloud – Yahoo will be competing directly with current Hadoop vendors Cloudera and EMC (News 
- Alert). This will be particularly interesting considering Hadoop creator Doug Cutting started at Yahoo before moving on to Cloudera, according to ReadWriteWeb.com.
Harris speculates that HortonWorks may have an edge on the competition because of its software development background and its close relationship with the Apache project.
“The goal is to make HortonWorks the go-to vendor for a production-ready Hadoop distribution and support, but also to advance Yahoo’s repeated mission of making the official Apache Hadoop distribution the place to go for core software,” Harris wrote.
He added that HortonWorks will concentrate on making easy-to-consume Hadoop products that feature high-level management tools. HortonWorks’ goal will also be to build Hadoop offerings that are capable of handling high production workloads, according to GigaOm.
Harris expects HortonWorks to be a joint venture of Yahoo and a notable investor. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Yahoo was speaking to Benchmark Capital about the spinoff, so don’t be surprised to hear of their involvement.
So far, Hadoop has yet to make anyone a great deal of money. Cloudera has raised $36 million since its launch, but Harris speculates that the company only generated “a few million” in revenue last year. Still, most assume that Hadoop can become a billion dollar industry.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It’s also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
