Obsidian Systems, a leading provider of open source services, in South Africa and Hortonworks(r), the leading provider of Open Enterprise Hadoop, have entered into a partnership to provide South African businesses with an open source platform for the distributed processing of large amounts of data.
Apache Hadoop is an open source platform that enables businesses to quickly gain insight from massive amounts of structured and unstructured data. It enables transformative business outcomes through new analytic applications and substantial cost reductions in IT infrastructure for big data storage and processing.
“We have been experimenting with Hadoop for a while and our local customers made it clear that Hortonworks is the platform of choice. There is a great cultural fit between Obsidian and Hortonworks with both organisations enjoying working closely together. This partnership fits in with our strategic roadmap and compliments everything we have done as an organisation for the past two decades,” says Muggie van Staden, MD of Obsidian Systems.
Andy Leaver, vice-president: international operations at Hortonworks, is equally excited about the potential that Hadoop has in the South African market.
“We have seen a tremendous uptick in big data implementations in South Africa and Obsidian is a great partner and provides the local expertise needed to take Hadoop to the next level here. Hortonworks likes to work closely with its customers and this agreement with Obsidian enables us to do so in South Africa as well,” says Leaver.
Hortonworks works closely with its partners like Obsidian Systems to enable a modern data architecture that enables transformational business outcomes through analysing big data, while providing all the governance, security, and operations capabilities that enterprise IT requires. Hortonworks certifies existing tools and applications used by the enterprise enabling them to maximise their investment and gain additional value from their data.
“This means companies can use their existing tool sets for what they have been designed to do and not as their data source. It is not necessarily about Big Data but about utilising the data you have at your disposal. With Hortonworks, you can derive value out of your data in an effective manner – smarter data,” says van Staden.
Leaver agrees: “Customer are realising the value of big data analysis. Hadoop enables them to process data faster than before and analyse it to make more agile business decisions. While it is an ideal solution for larger companies, the technology is very accessible for small to medium enterprises. Additionally, a partner like Obsidian can help with implementation and the transition,” he says.
Hadoop is so powerful that users can extract value out of the analytics using standard spreadsheet software. This means smaller companies can rely on very basic software and leverage Hadoop to assist with analysing its data.
