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MapR Systems, the San Jose, Calif.-primarily based startup that sells it very own Hadoop distribution for examining large volumes of unstructured data, has raised a $ twenty million Series B spherical from Redpoint Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and NEA. MapR has been red hot in the huge info area given that launching in the spring, positioning itself as an choice to Cloudera, and the new dollars proves that MapR has some believers.
Prior to MapR, the Hadoop room quite much consisted of the core Apache Hadoop distribution (alongside with different associated jobs) and Cloudera’s enterprise-hardened, and all-inclusive, edition of the very same code. Cloudera utilized the relative lack of opposition to set up alone as the Hadoop organization, but everybody realized Cloudera wouldn’t have the spotlight to itself forever with curiosity in huge data, and specifically Hadoop, developing so quickly.
Just before MapR introduced, Cloudera also took the lion’s share of VC funds heading towards Hadoop, raising $ 36 million considering that 2009. Its $ twenty five million round that closed in October 2010 was the most a Hadoop startup has observed by a prolonged shot, until eventually MapR’s $ 20 million nowadays.
MapR has garnered so a lot praise since its Hadoop distribution aims to clear up a lot of of the functionality issues that bog down the tech. The firm really provides two distributions — M3 and M5 — with the big difference getting advanced reliability and storage capabilities in the compensated M5 edition. Storage giant EMC believes so much in MapR’s technique to Hadoop that its Enterprise Edition Hadoop distribution is centered nearly entirely on MapR’s M5 supplying.
MapR Co-Founder and CEO John Schroeder informed me he thinks his business by now has a few-year lead on the Hadoop distribution marketplace in terms of engineering, and it will use the new funds to broaden on that lead. Regardless of whether its engineering lead is that big is debatable, but making its personal IP certainly puts MapR in an interesting place since it’s not beholden to Apache for new capabilities as Cloudera is.
The emergence of Yahoo spinoff Hortonworks no doubt will assist progress the tempo of Hadoop innovation in Apache, but even that operate will float all boats. Due to the fact Apache Hadoop is open up resource, MapR is no cost to use — and does use — that code just like everybody else. And, in reality, MapR is an Apache Hadoop contributor.
We’ll have to see if MapR is ultimately capable to make a dent the significant mindshare lead that Cloudera has expended years constructing up. Cloudera has been an avid Hadoop evangelist, and has integration partnerships spanning the IT landscape from hardware distributors to BI software package. But if VC money and early buzz are any indication, MapR seems poised to do just great.
Picture courtesy of Flickr user zzzack.
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