5 Channel Opportunities Following EMC's Cloudera And Hortonworks Partnerships

Major Upside Following Hadoop Partnerships

In recent weeks, EMC has announced partnerships with Cloudera and Hortonworks, making the Hadoop powerhouses part of its Tech Connect and Select Partner programs.

In late July, Cloudera joined the EMC Technology Connect business partner program, which allows EMC customers to license Cloudera Enterprise through EMC and its reseller partners. Barely a week later, EMC made Hortonworks a Select Partner, giving the storage giant another avenue into the burgeoning big- data market, expanding an existing relationship with the open-source Hadoop data platform developer, and giving EMC the ability to resell Hortonworks Data Platform either direct or through channel partners.

Partners and analysts said the move has significant upside for the channel as customers continue along a road to big-data adoption that hasn't always been smooth. Both Cloudera and Hortonworks platforms run on EMC's Isilon big-data storage systems. Check out five of the biggest opportunities for partners.

A Stronger Ecosystem

World Wide Technology Vice President Bob Olwig said closer ties with Hortonworks and Cloudera strengthen the EMC ecosystem. He said EMC is wise to partner with leading Hadoop companies.

"For WWT, the opportunity is to further strengthen the ecosystem we've created with EMC, Cloudera, Hortonworks and others to work with clients to discover business use-cases for analytics," Olwig said. "Partner programs like EMC's help foster that collaboration."

"Big data analytics is gaining momentum; it’s still early days, and each of the Hadoop players brings different strengths to the market. We are seeing interest from customers for all of the main Hadoop distributions," Olwig said.

"EMC’s role will be to foster the integration of Cloudera, Hortonworks and other big-data technologies into their reference architectures," Olwig said. "WWT is doing much of that design and architectural work in our Advanced Technology Center. More importantly, we're proving it out on customer-specific use-cases."

Bigger Big Data Revenue

The Cloudera and Hortonworks alliances should help channel partners improve big data analytics revenue, said Krista Macomber, an analyst with TBR Inc.

"The analytics market is strategic for channel partners to compete in, because customers are increasingly turning to analytics as a key tool to reduce operational costs and better capitalize on emerging opportunities," Macomber said.

Simple, Inexpensive

EMC's Isilon big-data storage systems have native Hadoop support, and this provides a clear value proposition, Macomber said, allowing EMC to offer "simple, inexpensive connectivity to Hadoop platforms."

"Such differentiation resonates in today's market, as customers stretch every IT dollar and seek to reduce IT complexity," she said.

Reputation And Differentiation

EMC has a strong industry reputation for reliability and availability, especially in its VMAX platform. Macomber said EMC has invested in making sure that reputation translates to its Isilon arrays. "As customers turn to Hadoop for increasingly mission-critical insights, this credibility supports differentiation," she said.

Scalability And Efficiency

Isilon's scalability is a compelling selling point for customers in search of better flexibility and efficiency, Macomber said, especially in Hadoop environments where better utilization and more agility from storage systems can be an important operational and cost consideration.