Intel is the latest company to offer a software suite to help companies manage Big Data in the form of its Data Platform.
The company has built upon its Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop to provide an open source environment to import, manage and analyse big data.
The main purpose of the platform is to enable enterprises to extract value from data in ways not previously feasible with Hadoop, but build upon Hadoop’s open source environment.
Looking back fifteen years ago when the Linux platform was first emerging, the high end of the market was dominated by UNIX at the time. UNIX was highly capable, but the market was fragmented and the solutions were closed and proprietary. As Linux matured as an environment, it remained open, multi-vendor and cost effective and the result was a decade of rapid growth.
"The new data platform is at a similar crossroads: will the market fragment into proprietary islands, or will it remain open and drive that growth?"said Nick Knupffer, director of marketing communications at Intel’s datacentre software division.
"That is why Intel is delivering this Hadoop software. We are uniquely committed to ensuring this product evolves to deliver maximum customer value and rapid growth. It is not a side show for us, it is critical to our core business."
Knuppfer also drew comparisons between IBM’s PureData system and Unix’s failure to expand.
"[The situation] is similar to UNIX and Linux. UNIX closed proprietary where Linux remained open and used standard volume hardware. That’s exactly where we see the divergence going," he told CBR.
"Our product is to be seen as building blocks and e-businesses can innovate on top of that to produce final polished applications. So there is a difference [between Intel and IBM] there as well."
Ritu Kama, director of Big Data at Intel also told CBR: "We’re committed to have a platform driven by the innovation in open source platform and this is directly connected and committed back to the Apache community whether it’s in ECSS, MapReduce of HBase – any of these ecosystem projects.
"That’s quite different from how IBM is approaching their platform, in my mind."
