Better Buy: Hortonworks vs. Cloudera

Here at the Fool, we aim to find #Amazon -like growth potential. One of the best places to look for market-beating growth is in emerging technologies such as #Hadoop. Hadoop is a Java-based architecture that allows for the storage and fast processing of massive amounts of data -- amounts that would overwhelm traditional solutions. It sits at the nexus of two emerging trends: Big Data and open-source software. The potential for Hadoop is huge. Markets and Markets Research projects the Hadoop market will grow from $6.7 billion in 2016 to $40.7 billion in 2021, an average growth rate of 43.4%. Despite its vast potential, #Hadoop is technically challenging, and there are currently only four Hadoop distributors -- #Hortonworks (NASDAQ:HDP), #Cloudera (NYSE:CLDR), privately held #MapR, and #Amazon s Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN). The two public pure-plays are Hortonworks and newly public #Cloudera. Which is the better buy today?

Business model

The technology behind #Hadoop is open-source, which means it's free for developers to use and modify. That may seem anathema to, you know, making money, but there are ways.

#Hortonworks and #Cloudera each have distinct business models. Hortonworks delivers Hadoop technology programs for free, and charges for support, education, and professional services. Its offering has traditionally been geared toward data scientists.

Cloudera, on the other hand, writes proprietary software on top of #Hadoop for enterprise-specific applications, more like traditional enterprise software.

Both companies, however, are venturing onto the other's turf. #IBM (NYSE:IBM) recently folded its Hadoop offering, #BigInsights, and will now distribute its analytics and data science software on top of #Hortonworks' Data Platform in a more "packaged" offering for enterprise.  Hortonworks has a similar partnership with )1st #Microsoft 's (NASDAQ: MSFT) #Azure called #HDInsight, and recently licensed a specialized version of HDP to #Amazon, even though Amazon also has its own #Hadoop distribution called #Elastic #MapReduce.

#Cloudera, in contrast, is becoming a bit more open, with its new Data Science Workbench, which allows data scientists to create Hadoop applications in their preferred programming language (not necessarily Java). Cloudera also has a new platform-as-a-service offering called #Altus. 

Which model is better? It's a tough call, but I'm giving this one to Hortonworks. Having Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM license your offering to their vast customer bases seems much easier than competing against them, as Cloudera does.

Winner: Hortonworks

Growth

While Cloudera, founded in 2008, was the first Hadoop distribution company, Hortonworks, founded in 2011, was the first to go public in 2014. With its head start, Cloudera is larger than Hortonworks, but both are growing at similar rates.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/09/better-buy-hortonworks-or-cloudera.aspx