Hybrid, cloud-native and open source define Cloudera’s 3-pronged approach, post-merger

Cloud-native and open source are top of mind in Cloudera’s post-merger product portfolio

One of the key highlights of the event was the launch of Cloudera Data Platform (CDP), an open-source, hybrid cloud platform that includes Cloudera Data Warehouse, Cloudera Machine Learning and Cloudera Data Hub services. CDP is currently available on Amazon Web Services (AWS; Nasdaq: AMZN); however Cloudera hopes to provide customers with a broader range of IaaS providers as the company announced plans to bring CDP to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in the coming months. While Cloudera is taking a calculated risk by pushing customers to competing services, TBR believes the benefits will outweigh the costs due to the vendor’s increased exposure to a large customer base. The launch of CDP highlights the company’s cloud-native play but also aligns with Cloudera’s intent to offer customers more deployment options. TBR notes that many vendors still perceive the data center as a legacy standard; however, Cloudera is attempting to view it as a gateway to creating a hybrid instance, exemplified by its forthcoming launch of an on-premises version of CDP, dubbed CDP Data Center. This offering will be especially appealing to “lift and shift” customers who have large data sets on-premises and wish to migrate to the cloud.

Relying on security and governance for differentiation

Leveraging open-source technology to deliver solutions to customers regardless of deployment method is rapidly gaining acceptance in the market and therefore has forced Cloudera to explore new avenues for differentiation. TBR believes the vendor is attempting to achieve this through its enterprise-grade security and data governance solution, Cloudera SDX (Shared Data Experience). As a single management plane, SDX separates the data layer from the compute layer to provide automated security and compliance across platforms to help reduce costs and mitigate risk. Cloudera works its SDX offering into the rest of its portfolio, including its recently launched CDP offering, to secure data lakes and centrally manage large amounts of data. VP of Product Management Fred Koopmans and VP of Engineering Ram Venkatesh highlighted the negative effects shadow IT vendors are having on customers’ data privacy as a lack of interconnectivity between platforms hinders fraud detection and data repurposing.

Additionally, shadow IT causes dispersed data, which will inevitably require more labor resources and thus only increase the burden on customers that are likely operating on a shortage of sufficient IT skills. Findings from TBR’s 1H19 Cloud Applications Customer Research indicate that shadow IT is being eliminated while increasingly consolidated purchasing is leading lines of business to report greater autonomy when it comes to making IT decisions. As a result of these trends, we believe Cloudera is taking the right approach by strengthening SDX integrations to provide customers with greater autonomy and centralized data, making app developers, data engineers, business intelligence (BI) analysts and data scientists far more likely to adopt CDP or similar platforms.

In September Cloudera hosted its annual Cloudera Analyst Day, where analysts gained insights during breakout sessions, product demonstrations, keynotes and detailed one-on-one talks with company executives, customers and partners. Key talks included product demonstrations from Cloudera’s recently appointed CEO Marty Cole, Chief Marketing Officer Mick Hollison and Chief Product Officer Arun Murthy, along with a presentation from IBM’s General Manager of Data and AI Rob Thomas. Founded in 2008, Cloudera operates in 85 countries and has approximately 3,000 employees and over 2,000 customers.