As more and more companies look to gain deep insights from their ever-expanding stores of data, many are turning to an open source framework called Apache Hadoop. It is a flexible and efficient way to store and process large amounts of data, and in just a few years an ecosystem of software packages has sprung up around processing and managing Hadoop data clusters.
And now Forrester Research, an independent technology market research firm, is finding an increasing number of enterprises are moving their Hadoop databases to the cloud rather than store them on local servers. So Forrester decided to do an industry report to assess providers of Hadoop Cloud Solutions.
In all, they evaluated eight different vendors along 37 criteria. Microsoft Azure was named one of the four leaders and placed ahead of Amazon Web Services, IBM, and Google in terms of both their current offerings and strategy. Microsoft was also specifically mentioned for “having a cloud-first strategy that is paying off.”
After the report was announced, a vice president from Hortonworks (the company responsible for Hadoop) was quoted on the Azure Blog saying:
We are excited to see Microsoft so prominently placed in the Forrester Big Data Hadoop Cloud Wave. The engineering teams from Hortonworks and Microsoft have worked hand-in-hand on making Azure HDInsight the best platform to deploy Hortonworks Data Platform. We look forward to continuing our deep partnership together to give our customers the best options to deploy Hadoop on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid scenarios.
Microsoft is centering a significant part of its cloud strategy around helping companies manage and analyze large sets of data with a wide array of big data and advanced analytics tools comprising the Cortana Intelligence Suite. Being named a leading provider is surely a welcome reaffirmation in Redmond that the technology giant is successfully transitioning to a “mobile-first, cloud-first” company just over two years after the phrase was first used by their new CEO.
