Rackspace Expands Data Services With Hortonworks' Hadoop In the Cloud

Rackspace Hosting will offer Hortonworks’ flavor of Apache Hadoop in the cloud and as a managed service, as part of Rackspace Data Services, a collection of "Big Data" database offerings available as a service.

Rackspace continues to expand both its big data solutions and managed support in efforts to court big enterprise customers. With the managed service offering, customers are able to deploy a fully featured and supported Hadoop infrastructure through a single vendor contract. Rackspace is offering early access to some customers, and will gradually expand  access to the offering.

Offering Hadoop as a Service continues to be a focus for leading hosting and cloud providers. “In years past, it was about how to store data; now customers are asking ‘what can I do with my data to generate revenue?’” said Sean Anderson, Product Marketing Manager for Data Solutions at Rackspace. "I feel that our cloud product is accelerating that data exploration. When you look at traditional IT, there’s always a concern with moving to a more developer-focused platform. This allows them to integrate Apache Hadoop without adding the resources and costs needed to do so.

Rackspace first partnered with Hortonworks last year, and recently acquired Object Rocket and Excellent Cloud Servers to boost its offerings on the big data front. Future NoSQL offerings will join the portfolio to provide hybrid alternatives to address MongoDB and Redis technologies.

The benefits of using Hadoop in this model include the ability to rapidly deploy with low operational burden. Rackspace says it is offering simple pricing plans to address pricing confusion experienced with some cloud services.

“The volume of data being processed in businesses today is astounding," said John Engates, CTO of Rackspace. "Companies need help analysing and extracting value from this vast amount of information, as Big Data solutions are difficult to deploy and harder to maintain. With Rackspace’s new Cloud Big Data Platform offering and Managed Support for Apache Hadoop, we’re providing an open, hybrid Big Data solution for dedicated and cloud instances.  Combining this technological expertise with enhanced support from Hortonworks allows us to bring a best-in class Big Data solution to market.”

Benefits of the new offering include:

"We are excited to be partnering with Rackspace to bring the Hortonworks Data Platform to the Rackspace Hybrid Cloud," said John Kreisa, vice president of strategic marketing at Hortonworks. "By combining the open source commitments of Rackspace and Hortonworks, we are creating a platform of capabilities that accelerates the adoption of open standards while continuing to deliver expertise to the broader Hadoop community."