MapR Unveils Most Comprehensive Data Connection Options for Hadoop

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MapR Technologies, Inc., the provider of the industry’s most advanced distribution for Apache Hadoop, today announced at GigaOm’s Structure:Data event a comprehensive set of data connection options for Hadoop enabling a wide range of data ingress and egress alternatives for customers. These include direct file-based access using standard tools and file-based applications, direct database connectivity, Hadoop specific connectors via Sqoop, Flume and Hive; and direct access to popular data warehouses and applications using custom connectors.

“By providing a graphical development layer that abstracts the technical complexity of Hadoop, we are taking the difficulty out of Hadoop integration. Talend makes it easy to bring relevant enterprise data into Hadoop, cleanse this data and move it to analytics platforms – all of this without coding.”

Additionally, technology providers Pentaho and Talend have embraced MapR with alliance partnerships to provide direct integration with MapR’s Distribution. MapR has also entered into a partnership with leading data warehouse and business intelligence platform vendor Tableau Software to ensure customers benefit from MapR’s comprehensive data connection options. These partners join Informatica to further deliver a wide range of connectivity alternatives for Big Data analytics by extending the dependability, ease of use and performance of the MapR Distribution.

With the exponential growth in unstructured data, fast, dependable and easy access to relevant data is crucial to extract business insight from Big Data analysis. MapR’s Distribution enables customers using Hadoop Big Data software to realize significant performance improvements, reliability and ease of use enhancements.

“These partnerships deliver a wide range of connectivity capabilities for Big Data analytics,” said Jack Norris, vice president of marketing for MapR. “Customers benefit from the ability to easily integrate leading data warehousing and business intelligence platforms with Hadoop and the deep integration, dependability, ease of use and performance of the MapR Distribution.”

Partners Accelerate Business Goals by Leveraging Data Connection Options

Technology companies are collaborating with MapR and choosing MapR offerings as their distribution of choice to build, deploy and sell differentiated offerings for Hadoop. This is enabling customers to access data via standard tools and file-based applications.

Pentaho and MapR

With MapR’s partnership with Pentaho, the MapR Distribution is integrated natively with Pentaho Kettle. Distributed under the Apache License, Pentaho Kettle adds visual tools to input, extract, manipulate, report, visualize and explore data in Hadoop. Certified and tested with MapR, Pentaho Kettle also provides scheduling, job orchestration, workflow, scalable deployment across entire Hadoop clusters, and native connectivity to HDFS, HBase, Hive, Pig and MapR’s NFS. Users will benefit from a seamless on-ramp to Pentaho Business Analytics, a complete end-to-end solution that enables users to intuitively access, discover and analyze their data, empowering them to make information-driven decisions that positively impact their organization's performance.

“The partnership between Pentaho and MapR technologies is a natural match to ensure maximized performance and provide easy to use tools to get value from data via exploration, data discovery, reporting and analytics,” said Eddie White, executive vice president, business development, Pentaho. “Together, Pentaho and MapR provide a dramatic boost in Hadoop developer productivity and extend usability to a much broader spectrum of developers, data scientists and business analysts.”

Talend Integration with MapR

MapR also directly integrates with Talend Open Studio for Big Data, the leading Apache-licensed big data integration solution, which has recently been certified to use with the MapR Distribution, offering native connectivity to HDFS, HBase, Hive, Pig, Sqoop, as well as MapR’s Direct Access NFS for high performance streaming. Providing integration of Hadoop with a broad variety of databases, packaged applications, files, legacy systems and SaaS and social media platforms, the MapR integration extends to the Talend Platform for Big Data, a comprehensive enterprise solution for data integration and data quality for big data environments.

“We are excited to be contributing the breadth of our integration technology to facilitate Hadoop’s deployment and comprehensiveness,” said Keith Goldstein, vice president of worldwide channels and alliances for Talend. “By providing a graphical development layer that abstracts the technical complexity of Hadoop, we are taking the difficulty out of Hadoop integration. Talend makes it easy to bring relevant enterprise data into Hadoop, cleanse this data and move it to analytics platforms – all of this without coding.”

Tableau Software and MapR

The new MapR ODBC driver will enable Tableau to quickly and easily access data stored in Hadoop. Customers will simply point Tableau to the MapR Distribution and instantly create reports, data visualizations and dashboards without any programming or coding. Tableau, positioned as a “challenger” by Gartner in its Business Intelligence platforms report, helps anyone quickly and easily analyze, visualize and share information. Native Tableau connectivity to MapR will be generally available later this spring.

“Our partnership with MapR will further Tableau’s mission to help people see and understand data, no matter where it resides,” said Dan Jewett, vice president of product management at Tableau Software. “Customers will be able to gain valuable insights from their data without needing any special configuration or technical skills typically required to operate Hadoop.”

MapR’s Open Database Connector

In addition to specific connectors and partnerships, MapR includes the most complete ODBC driver for the widest support of applications for data analysis and reporting. Developed with Simba Technologies, the recognized industry expert in ODBC that originally co-developed the ODBC specification with Microsoft, MapR enables virtually any ODBC-enabled application to connect and access data within MapR’s Hadoop/Hive implementation. No special add-in or optimizations are needed, unlike ODBC drivers supplied with other distributions.

Additional Resources

Learn more about the MapR Partner Program. http://www.mapr.com/partners
Read more details about Pentaho’s use of MapR data connection options in its news release. http://www.pentaho.com/press-room/releases/pentaho-and-mapr-put-big-data-to-work/
View Talend’s most recent news release concerning MapR’s data connection options. http://www.talend.com/press/Talend-and-MapR-Announce-Certification-of-Big-Data-Integration-and-Big-Data-Quality.php
See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableausoftware.com/trial.
Review Informatica’s March 5 announcement about the unique advantages MapR provides.
http://www.informatica.com/us/company/news-and-events-calendar/press-releases/03052012-MapR-Hadoop.aspx

About MapR Technologies

MapR delivers on the promise of Hadoop, making managing and analyzing Big Data a reality for more business users. The award-winning MapR Distribution brings unprecedented dependability, speed and ease-of-use to Hadoop combined with data protection and business continuity, enabling customers to harness the power of Big Data analytics. The company is headquartered in San Jose, CA. Investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA and Redpoint Ventures. To download the latest MapR Distribution for Apache Hadoop, please visit http://www.mapr.com/products/download.