Big data is behind yet another beautiful union between two star-crossed tech companies and this time, it’s IBM and Cloudera. Their decision to work more closely together comes about from Cloudera’s recent merger with competitor Hortonworks – a company who already had a long-standing relationship with big blue.
While Cloudera came to their partnership with IBM in a roundabout fashion, they are pleased to roll out the first-ever enterprise data cloud to customers running anything from Edge to AI on a fully open-source platform. The blending of both IBM’s and Cloudera’s offerings will enable them to jointly develop go-to-market products to combine advanced data and artificial intelligence solutions.
What it will mean for customers of the newly-partnered companies is a one-stop-shop for data collection, access, integration and data science tooling which are “optimized for the cloud” but can also be rolled out to those who prefer hybrid or on-premise licensing and packaging options. IBM will begin reselling Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub and Cloudera Data Flow as part of the agreement. In addition, Cloudera will be offering IBM’s Watson Studio and BigSQL
The independent research firm Forrester described the merger between Cloudera and Hortonworks as one that “will raise the bar on innovation in the big data space, especially in supporting an end-to-end big data strategy in a hybrid and multi-cloud environment. We believe that it’s a win-win situation for customers, partners, and the vendors.”
The addition of IBM’s artificial intelligence and data access tools will provide Cloudera with an array of powerful analytics technologies they can use to augment their own. Cloudera, itself, brings strength in cloud numbers and offers IBM ways to ensure they are staying ahead of the curve when it comes to the latest trends in information technology.
“By teaming more strategically with IBM we can accelerate data-driven decision making for our joint enterprise customers who want a hybrid and multi-cloud data management solution with common security and governance,” said Scott Andress, vice president of Global Channels and Alliances at Cloudera.
“We are pleased to have expanded our relationship with IBM, and I am very encouraged by the momentum that our companies have continued to generate together since the merger.”
Rumors abounded last week after DealReporter speculated that big blue might be eyeballing Cloudera as an acquisition option. The cloud company’s stocks surged up 5 percent on Tuesday, riding the wave of investor optimism about a potential payoff that could come from such a deal. It didn’t take long, however, for skepticism and second thoughts to take hold as Cloudera’s stock prices settled at $5.26 at close Friday.
