Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital to Form Hortonworks to Increase Investment in Hadoop Technology and Accelerate Innovation and Adoption
Independent Company Dedicated to Working with Apache Hadoop Community to
Architect the Future of Big Data
SUNNYVALE, Calif. & MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Benchmark Capital today announced the
formation of Hortonworks, an independent company consisting of key
architects and core contributors to the open source Apache™ Hadoop™
technology pioneered by Yahoo!. The formation of Hortonworks increases
investment in the development of Apache Hadoop and will accelerate
adoption by making it more robust and easier to install, manage and use
for enterprises and technology vendors. This investment will enable
Apache Hadoop to meet the growing market demand and become the big data
management and analysis platform of choice for the industry.
Apache Hadoop is the open source technology at the epicenter of big data
and cloud computing. It enables organizations to more efficiently and
cost-effectively store, process, manage and analyze the ever-increasing
volume of data being created and collected every day. With Apache Hadoop
companies can connect thousands of servers to process and analyze data
at supercomputing speed. Yahoo! pioneered, is the primary contributor
to, and one of the leading users of Apache Hadoop.
"Apache Hadoop has been and will continue to be an important area of
investment for Yahoo!. The creation of Hortonworks will enable Yahoo! to
leverage a commercial partnership in addition to our continued internal
investment to accelerate the evolution of the technology and its use to
power Yahoo!'s business," said Jay Rossiter, senior vice president,
Cloud Platform Group at Yahoo!. "Forming Hortonworks with Benchmark
Capital is the natural next step in the evolution of Apache Hadoop. As
Hadoop demand continues to increase, Hortonworks will help organizations
more rapidly and effectively implement the technology to derive value
and insights from large data sets."
"We anticipate that within five years, more than half the world's data
will be stored in Apache Hadoop. We've assembled a top caliber team
committed to the Apache open source community and with the technology
and business expertise to deliver value to the big data market," said
Eric Baldeschwieler, named CEO of Hortonworks and formerly VP of
software engineering for the Hadoop team at Yahoo!. "Apache Hadoop is an
exceptionally valuable technology and its growing adoption during the
last five years demonstrates its potential to quickly become the de
facto platform for managing big data."
"As businesses generate, organize and process more data than ever
before, the importance of Apache Hadoop in the enterprise has never been
more apparent," said Val Bercovici, cloud Czar at NetApp. "NetApp
is focused on working together with Hortonworks to empower our customers
with the advanced tools and services required for managing big data in
enterprise environments. We are excited to collaborate with the
Hortonworks team, the extended Apache-Hadoop community and our extensive
ecosystem of solution partners to accelerate the development and
adoption of Apache Hadoop."
Apache Hadoop plays a critical role in helping Yahoo! deliver
personalized content and experiences to its nearly 700 million consumers
worldwide. Apache Hadoop also helps drive Yahoo!'s powerful advertising
platforms that serve billions of digital advertisements daily, and
enables Yahoo! to provide enhanced anti-spam capabilities for Yahoo!
Mail.
Yahoo! funded the early prototyping of Hadoop in 2005. In 2006 Yahoo!
committed to using the technology in its core infrastructure and
invested in building it from a prototype to the system it is today,
contributing all its work back to Apache. Today Apache Hadoop is widely
deployed at organizations around the globe, including industry leaders
from across the Internet and social networking landscape such as eBay,
Facebook, Netflix and LinkedIn. Other technology leaders including
Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and IBM have integrated Apache Hadoop
into their offerings.
The investment by Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital in Hortonworks is subject
to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in July 2011.
Read Yahoo! CTO Raymie Stata's blog about the news today at: http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2011/06/hadoop-the-future-is-bright/.
About Hortonworks
Upon launch, Hortonworks will be a leading contributor to Apache Hadoop,
the world's most popular platform for storing, processing, managing and
analyzing big data. The company will also assist enterprises and
technology vendors in developing and deploying Apache Hadoop-based
solutions via support subscriptions, training and certification
programs. Primary investors in Hortonworks include Benchmark Capital and
Yahoo!.
To learn about the background and mission of the company, read the
Hortonworks Manifesto at http://www.hortonworks.com/our-manifesto/.
For more information, visit: www.hortonworks.com.
Follow Hortonworks on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#hortonworks.
About Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital, a leading venture capital firm, was founded in 1995
to help outstanding entrepreneurs with original ideas build successful
technology companies. Benchmark's general partners operate an equal
partnership and take a hands-on approach to venture investing in cloud,
social, and mobile technology companies. Benchmark's portfolio includes
high-profile start-ups such as Twitter, Yelp, Quora, Instagram, and
Uber, recent exits such as OpenTable, ZipCar, and Metaweb, and franchise
companies such as eBay, Juniper Networks, and Red Hat. The firm manages
$2.5 billion in committed venture capital. For more information on
Benchmark Capital, visit its website at www.benchmark.com.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) is the premier digital media company, creating
deeply personal digital experiences that keep more than half a billion
people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around
the globe. And Yahoo!'s unique combination of Science + Art + Scale
connects advertisers to the consumers who build their businesses. Yahoo!
is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit
the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.com)
or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal (yodel.yahoo.com).
Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.
All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their
respective owners.
Yahoo!
Dana Lengkeek, 415-994-4008
danal@yahoo-inc.com
or
Schwartz
Communications for Hortonworks
Keith Giannini, 415-817-2500
Katy
Garlinghouse, 415-817-2500
Hortonworks@schwartzcomm.com
or
Yahoo!
Investor:
Cathy
La Rocca, 408-349-5188
cathy@yahoo-inc.com
Source: Yahoo! Inc.
News Provided by Acquire Media
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