A Possible Trajectory for Open Source Search
January 18, 2010
I read “How Hadoop Startup Cloudera Is Evolving” in the Industry Standard. Let me define a couple of terms to help me get my point across. Hadoop is an open source version of next generation technology for data intensive distributed applications. Hadoop has some hooks into some Google technology for data management wizardry. You can get some additional information in “Map Reduce Programming with Apache Hadoop”. A Cloudera employee (Doug Cutting) is pegged as the person who created Hadoop. With Hadoop as a top level Apache project, variants have emerged. Yahoo, for example, has its own Hadoop distribution. (No, I don’t know why. That’s what makes Yahoo Yahoo I suppose.) Hadoop is a big deal and both Google and IBM want to build Hadoop awareness among budding data wizards.
Now back to the Industry Standard article. For me the key point was that “Cloudera
has also quietly released a proprietary data integration app. It “doesn’t replace an Informatica or Ab Initio,” says Cloudera CEO Mike Olson, but it does provide extract and transform features. The data integration app will be formally released this quarter as part of the overarching Cloudera Dta Platform. No price has been determined yet, said Olson.
The trajectory strikes me that open source provides a technical and marketing angle. The revenue generating part of the approach is proprietary technology and services. Cloudera’s investors rightly want their money back and a payoff from their $11.0 million in funding to Cloudera. Open source is shifting from “open” to a more highly spiced approach.
Now what’s this have to do with open source search? In my view, the Cloudera approach is another example of using open source as a marketing hook that dangles lower cost, community support, and higher performance in front of very hungry chief financial officers. The Cloudera approach makes clear that the on premises console hooks into the Cloudera cloud service creating a very practical approach to issues of control and on premises security methods.
Will this highly spiced approach reduces the total cost of ownership of an open source search solution? The answer is a “maybe”. Here’s why:
- License fees are not an issue at the outset; additional software, if required, may require license fees
- Maintenance can be zero if you have the expertise to manage the system. If you don’t, you will have to pay for maintenance service
- Customization can be a do-it-yourself job. If you cannot do it yourself, you will need to pay for that service
- Integration can be embedded in other costs, but if extensive customization is required, that cost will surface.
In short, the open source angle is more of a marketing play than a significant difference from commercial software. When a proprietary software vendor jumps into the open source game, there is a marketing and revenue reason that overshadows the “do good” reasons.
Life is good with open source solutions if you are knowledgeable. If you aren’t, I am not confident that the total costs will be significant when I look out across staff turnover, the need for special functions, and a change driven by a change elsewhere in the organization’s technical infrastructure.
The Cloudera trajectory strikes me as one to monitor. Will the mission control folks say “Mission accomplished” or “Houston, we have a problem”?
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2010
No one paid me to write this opinion. Do I report this to the FCC, an outfit that seeks opinions?
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