Hortonworks

Hortonworks, Inc.

Company type	Public
Industry	Software
Founded	June 2011 (2011-06)
Defunct	January 2019 (2019-01)
Fate	Merged with Cloudera
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California , United States
Area served	Global
Key people	Eric Baldeschweiler (CEO), Rob Bearden (COO), Peter Fenton (Board member)
Products	Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF), Hortonworks DataPlane services (DPS)
Parent	Cloudera (post-merger)

Hortonworks, Inc. was a software firm headquartered in Santa Clara, California that focused on open-source software solutions centered around Apache Hadoop for big data management and processing.

The company's software facilitated enterprise-level data services and applications such as IoT implementations (including connected vehicles), unified customer, risk, and patient views, as well as sophisticated analytics powered by machine learning (for example, real-time cybersecurity and next-best-action strategies). Hortonworks offered three integrated product suites:

• Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP): developed using Apache Hadoop, Apache Hive, and Apache Spark
• Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF): built upon Apache NiFi, Apache Storm, and Apache Kafka
• Hortonworks DataPlane services (DPS): utilizing Apache Atlas, Cloudbreak, alongside a modular framework enabling partner integrations such as with IBM

In January 2019, Hortonworks combined with Cloudera, merging its Apache-based offerings into the Cloudera Data Platform.

History

Established in June 2011 with $23 million in venture funding from Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital, Hortonworks started as an independent entity based in Sunnyvale, California. The company employed prominent contributors to the open source software initiative Apache Hadoop. Its flagship product, the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), debuted in June 2012 and integrated Apache Hadoop components including the Hadoop Distributed File System, MapReduce, Pig, Hive, HBase, and ZooKeeper to facilitate storage, processing, and analysis of extensive datasets.

Eric Baldeschweiler, formerly of Yahoo, was the inaugural CEO, while Rob Bearden, previously with SpringSource, served as COO. Benchmark partner Peter Fenton joined the board of directors. The company’s name was inspired by Horton the Elephant, a character symbolizing Hadoop.

In October 2018, Hortonworks and Cloudera announced a merger of equals through an all-stock transaction aimed at creating a leading-edge data platform. This merger concluded in January 2019, resulting in the integration of Hortonworks’ Apache products into the Cloudera Data Platform.