Accenture has extended its partnership with Hortonworks, the provider of Apache Hadoop, in efforts to make big data more accessible for organisations unfamiliar with the technology.
Hortonworks said it will provide its 100% open source Hadoop platform for Accenture customers looking to integrate it with their existing infrastructure, as engineers from Accenture provide the support.
The companies, which began working together in 2012, said the alliance will help organisations better manage, store and analyse structured and unstructured datasets.
"Data technologies are evolving rapidly, and enterprises and governments are challenged with how to adopt them while making sure the wealth of information is not inaccessible or underutilised," said Accenture’s senior managing director Narendra Mulani.
"As companies move toward becoming digital businesses, they need to analyse all of their data to find key insights that will drive business outcomes.
"Our alliance with Hortonworks underpins our commitment to help clients embrace the challenges of digital transformation and accelerate returns from their data and analytics investments."
The move comes as competition for big data service heats up. Cloudera, which provides an enterprise data hub also built on Apache Hadoop, this week extended its partnership with outsourcer and consultancy firm Capgemini.
Accenture, which operates in more than 120 countries, also teamed up with Cloudera last month, with the aim of providing its customers with access to Cloudera’s Hadoop software. And Dell, Intel and Cloudera launched a customised In-Memory appliance for Apache Hadoop last month.
