RainStor, a provider of big data management software, is joining with IBM in the big data market. RainStor will work with IBM to deliver a solution that combines IBM's enterprise-class, Hadoop-based product, InfoSphere BigInsights, with RainStor's Big Data Analytics on Hadoop product to enable faster, more flexible analytics on multi-structured data, without the need to move data out of the Hadoop environment.
InfoSphere BigInsights offers the advantages of Apache Hadoop to the enterprise, adding administrative workflow, provisioning and security features, along with analytical capabilities from IBM Research. By pairing it with RainStor's specialized database that can be deployed on any combination of IBM servers and storage, the vendors say, the new combined solution can reduce the TCO for customers by significantly reducing physical storage, and also improving the performance of querying and analyzing big data sets across the enterprise.
"When we went to market with our Big Data Analytics on Hadoop product earlier this year, we also announced partnerships with the major Apache Hadoop distribution partners - Cloudera, Hortonworks, and MapR, and of course vanilla Apache Hadooop," RainStor's vice president of marketing Deirdre Mahon tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We have always been agnostic when it comes to any hardware or storage platform. It is the customer's choice in terms of what they want when they choose which Hadoop platform they want to go with and which provider to utilize for support, tools and services," says Mahon. "We let the customers decide that and that continues to be the case. IBM has put a lot of energy, resources and marketing into this platform, and so, likewise, we wanted to also form a partnership with them and work with them in terms of supporting their partners that choose their distribution."
In terms of what IBM sees in Rainstor, Mahon says that RainStor stands out because there are very few enterprise-grade databases that will run natively on Hadoop. "What I mean by ‘enterprise-grade' is that there is built-in replication, security permissions, the ability to easily scale and just add additional servers as data volumes grow," says Mahon. "IBM's customer base is large enterprises so they know those are things that an enterprise will look for in addition to standard SQL query. Rainstor supports full ANSI SQL. It is not just MapReduce and Pig for batch analytics, but also SQL, which enterprises have been using for years and years. They want to work with us because we have that enterprise-grade database that will work on their Hadoop distribution."
More information about Rainstor is available at www.rainstor.com
For more information about IBM's InfoSphere BigInsights, go to
www-01.ibm.com/software/data/infosphere/biginsights.