Red Hat, Hortonworks, IBM Unveil Open Hybrid Architecture Initiative

Red Hat, Hortonworks and IBM are collaborating to make it easier for businesses to run containerized big-data workloads however they chose to run them, whether they are on-premises, multicloud or using edge architectures.

To accomplish this goal, the companies have launched an Open Hybrid Architecture Initiative that aims to establish a common enterprise deployment model that will eventually make it possible.

The first part of the initiative will include collaborating to optimize Hortonworks Data Platform, Hortonworks DataFlow, Hortonworks DataPlane and IBM Cloud Private for Data for use on the RedHat OpenShift container and Kubernetes application platform, the partners said. By tying these applications together, users will be able to more easily develop and deploy containerized bigdata workloads as well as manage data applications across hybrid-cloud infrastructures. IBM and Hortonworks will also collaborate further to integrate additional services for customers who use Hortonworks DataPlane with IBM Cloud Private for Data.

The initiative expands on an earlier Hortonworks and IBM collaboration by working to enable big-data workloads to run within a modern, container-based foundation and hybrid-cloud environment running on Red Hat OpenShift.

"The work that Red Hat, IBM and Hortonworks are doing to modernize enterprise big-data workloads via containerization is aimed at helping customers to take advantage of the agility, economics and scale of a hybrid data architecture," said Rob Bearden, the chief executive officer of Hortonworks. "The innovations resulting from this collaboration can enable the seamless and trusted hybrid-deployment model needed today by enterprises that are undergoing significant business-model transformation."

Under the partnership, Hortonworks will work to certify its Data Platform, DataFlow and DataPlane as Red Hat Certified Containers on OpenShift. The company also plans to enhance Hortonworks DataPlane to adopt a cloud-native architecture for on-premises deployments so customers can more easily adopt a hybrid architecture for big data-applications and analytics while maintaining common and trusted security features, data governance and other operations.

"Kubernetes is the de facto container orchestration system and we have been working in this ecosystem since the project's infancy to help make it ready for all, and especially the enterprise in Red Hat OpenShift," Ashesh Badani, vice president and general manager of cloud platforms for Red Hat, said. "By building and managing their applications via containers and Kubernetes with OpenShift, customers and the big-data ecosystem have opportunities to bring this next generation of big-data workloads to the hybrid cloud and deliver the benefits of an agile, efficient, reliable multicloud infrastructure."

Ashesh Badani

Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, told Channel Futures that the fledgling Open Hybrid Architecture Initiative could be a boon for enterprises that require such capabilities.

"Generally, the complex applications of today require more than one vendor to completely fill out the overall strategy to fix a problem," said Enderle. "This announcement is a case in point, extending the IBM Hortonworks alliance to include Red Hat for an open, collaborative big-data platform that is potentially very powerful to the right customer."

Rob Enderle

Very large companies need these kinds of answers to their specialized technology needs, said Enderle. "It required all three companies to pull it together. That is often the nature for something of this scale."