Cloudera and Cask recently announced a strategic collaboration marked by a commitment to integrate the product roadmaps of both companies into a unified vision based around the goal of empowering developers to more easily build and deploy applications using Hadoop. As part of the collaboration, Cloudera made an equity investment in Cask, the company formerly known as Continuity. Cask’s flagship product consists of the Cask Data Application Platform (CDAP), an application platform used to streamline and simplify Hadoop-based application development in addition to delivering operational tools for integrating application components and performing runtime services. The integration of Cask’s open source Cask Data Application Platform with Cloudera’s open source Hadoop distribution represents a huge coup for Cask insofar as its technology stands to become tightly integrated with one of the most popular Hadoop distributions in the industry and correspondingly vie for potential acquisition by Cloudera as its product develops further. Cloudera, on the other hand, stands to gain from Cask’s progress in building a platform for facilitating Big Data application development that runs natively within a Hadoop infrastructure. By aligning its product roadmap with Cask, Cloudera adds yet another feather to its cap vis-à-vis tools and platforms within its ecosystem that enhance and accelerate the experience of Hadoop adoption. Overall, the partnership strengthens Cloudera’s case for going public by illustrating the astuteness and breadth of its vision when it comes to strategic partners and collaborators such as Cask, not to mention the business and technological benefits of the partnership. Expect Cloudera to continue aggressively building out its partner ecosystem as it hurtles toward an IPO that it may well be already preparing, at least as reported in Venturebeat.
Cloud Computing Today 