IT companies and business heavyweights are joining forces in a shared industry effort focused on promoting and advancing the state of Apache Hadoop and Big Data technologies for the enterprise.
Introducing the Open Data Platform Initiative (ODP) which will in essence, help enterprises enhance business value globally with Hadoop. Founding outfits Pivotal and Hortonworks are participating with GE Software, IBM, Infosys, SAS, AltiScale, Capgemini, CenturyLink, EMC, Splunk, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Teradata, and VMware in this effort.
Gavin Sherry, VP of Engineering, Data, at Pivotal writes: “Our goal is to create a standardized core platform of compatible versions of Apache Software Foundation projects that provide a stable base against which Big Data solutions providers can qualify solutions. This will facilitate compatibility and ease interoperability across the Big Data ecosystem while enabling a new level of choice for enterprises.”
In line with ASF guidelines the effort will enable collaboration between vendors and end users of Big Data technology.
Going by the annual TechTarget/Computer Weekly IT Spending Priorities survey for 2015, globally about 30% respondents said they were undertaking big data initiatives this year as compared to 2014’s 17%. In Europe the fraction was 26%, and for the UK 21%, Computer Weekly pointed out.
Navin Budhiraja, head of architecture and technology, Infosys, speaking for services noted that the ODP’s ecosystem would preserve “the rapid innovation cycles of open source software, while still providing the benefits of broad vendor support and interoperability.”
The announcement for the organisation came earlier last week through Pivotal’s blog post, where its nuances have been further detailed.
(Image credit: Andy Wilkinson, via Flickr)
