Hadoop Summit: Talking to the CEO of Hortonworks

June 30, 2011

Yesterday I attended the Hadoop Summit down in Santa Clara.  The one-day event featured a morning of general sessions followed by three tracks of break outs in the afternoon.  The event also featured displays by several dozen vendors.

The big topic of the day was Hortonworks, a Yahoo! spin-out that had been announced the day before.  The company, which will officially come into being next month will be made up of 25 core Hadoop engineers from Yahoo!  Leading this new venture as its CEO is Yahoo! veteran and until this week VP of Hadoop engineering, Eric Baldeschwieler.

In the afternoon I was able to get some time with Eric and learn more about his new gig.

Some of the ground Eric covers

  • What is Hortonworks and what are its goals?
  • (0:46) Who is the technical team that will be making up the new venture
  • (1:48) Their president Rob Bearden, his open source experience and the business expertise he brings
  • (2:24) Their customers
  • (2:44) Which Hadoop engineers will remain at Yahoo!
  • (3:37) The symbiotic relationship Hortonworks and Yahoo! will have and how they will help one another

Extra-credit reading

  • Press release:  Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital to Form Hortonworks to Increase Investment in Hadoop Technology and Accelerate Innovation and Adoption
  • Hortonworks slide deck from Eric’s Hadoop summit keynote

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Posted by Barton George

Dell + Aster data analytics solution: Live and in use

November 19, 2010

Today at a press conference in San Francisco we announced the general availability of our Dell cloud solutions.  One of the solutions we debuted was the Dell Cloud Solution for Data Analytics, a combination of our PowerEdge C servers with Aster Data’s nCluster, a massively parallel processing database with an integrated analytics engine.

Earlier this week I stopped by Aster Data‘s headquarters in San Carlos, CA and met up with their EVP of marketing, Sharmila Mulligan.   I recorded  the video above where Sharmila discusses the Dell and Aster solution and the fantastic results a customer is seeing with it.

Some of the ground Sharmila covers:

  • What customer pain points and problems does this solution address  (hint: organizations trying to manage huge amounts of both structured and unstructured data)
  • How Aster’s nCluster software is optimized for Dell PowerEdge C2100 and how it provides very high performance analytics as well as a cost effective way to store very large data.
  • (2:21) InsightExpress, a leading provider of digital marketing research solutions, has deployed the Dell and Aster analytics solution and has seen great results:
    • Up and running w/in 6 weeks
    • Queries that took 7-9 minutes now run in 3 seconds

Pau for now…

Extra-credit reading

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Posted by Barton George

Talking to Aster Data’s brand new CEO

September 30, 2010

I flew to Chicago today to support our partner Aster Data’s Big Data Insight summit.  This Chicago event is a part of series of roadshows that Aster is doing for customers in cities in the US and Europe.  Today’s event was held in the trendy Hotel Sax and featured talks from analysts as well as partners (SAS, Microstrategy and Dell).

Attending his first Aster roadshow was their brand new CEO, Quentin Gallivan.  As the post-event happy hour was winding down I grabbed a few minutes with Quentin.  Here is what he had to say:

Some of the topics Quentin covers:

  • What he did before Aster: CEO of BI SaaS provider Pivot link; CEO of Postini a SaaS email security company, and key exec at Verisign.
  • Why Quentin decided to join Aster.
  • How he heard about the opportunity.
  • What he see’s as Aster’s opportunity.
  • How the Dell partnership allows Aster to deliver a total solution.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

Cloud Camp Austin 2010

June 17, 2010

Last Thursday over a 100 cloud enthusiasts gathered for Cloud Camp Austin.  The event was held at Pervasive Software‘s headquarters and kicked off after 5PM with munchies and beer.  The event brought in folks all around Austin as well as visitors from exotic areas like upstate New York (the group had been in town for meetings).

Pre camp munchies and drinks as folks assemble.

Dell was one of the sponsors along with IBM, Microsoft, Twilio, Tropo, Redmonk and our  hosts Pervasive .  As always, the event was guided along by Mr. cloud camp, Dave Nielsen.  Being an “unconference,” after a spontaneously assembled “unpanel” who was called upon to answer questions from the audience, the crowd worked together to decide on the topics that would be discussed.

Dave Nielsen explains how this "unpanel" is going to work.

What a difference a year makes

I attended last year’s cloud camp in Austin and I don’t know if its the fact the industry has evolved so much since then or that this year there was a greater percentage of knowledgeable attendees (I suspect a little of both) but this year the topics and questions were much more sophisticated/technical.  As a results the conversations were much more meaty and focused more on “how to” rather than “how do you define.”

All in all a very cool event.

The schedule created on the fly by the attendees.

If you liked Cloud Camp and you like Hadoop, you’ll love…

Speaking of camps, Dave Nielsen is taking the camp idea and applying it to the world of Big Data.  The event, which will be held in Santa Clara on June 28, is imaginatively entitled, Big Data Camp Santa Clara.  This unconference  is targeted at users of Hadoop and related technologies and is held the night before Hadoop summit 2010.  So if you’re in the area and Hadoop/Big Data are your thing, check it out.

Pau for now…

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Posted by Barton George

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