Over the past couple of years, Hadoop has turned into the Justin Bieber of megascale data center software, with just about every Web company of consequence — Yahoo, Amazon.com, Facebook and Twitter, for example — fawning over its mystical powers. Now a start-up, Datameer, has appeared on the scene as the latest Hadoop groupie, but with a tweak on the Hadoop approach.
Hadoop helps companies deal with huge sets of data on low-cost hardware, and to query that data for insights about their business and customer behavior. In the simplest terms, Hadoop is open-source software that mimics much of the data analytics and programming smarts that Google uses.
A couple of start-ups have appeared that want to sell large companies add-ons and support for Hadoop. Cloudera is perhaps the best known of this bunch, selling support for its own version of Hadoop.
But Datameer has another idea. Executives from the company say Hadoop is too complicated for most information technology departments to use. In fact, Hadoop’s software has mostly appealed to big Web companies that have plenty of brainy engineers who understand it.
So Datameer has combined its own interface with a host of mathematical and software tools, hoping this will make it easier for business types to run their own data analysis jobs without needing to consult elite Hadoop wizards.
“We say you should worry about the business problems you want to solve and try to make that easy,” said Ajay Anand, the chief executive of Datameer.
Datameer’s software lets people grab large data sets, pose questions and then see the results in fancy graphical charts or raw logs, take your pick. To pull off such a feat, you basically just point and click at the lists of data sets and types of calculations you want, which are provided by Datameer.
Along with trying to make it easier to use Hadoop, Datameer has injected it with extra speed. The company has built the open-source Katta indexing system into its software, which means that customers can sort through information instantly.
Mr. Anand used to be the director of product management for Hadoop and Cloud Computing at Yahoo, which has been the biggest backer of Hadoop’s open-source development.
He joins a growing list of Yahoo executives who have bailed out of the company with their Hadoop expertise in hand. Doug Cutting, who created Hadoop, recently joined Cloudera, for example.
While at Yahoo, Mr. Anand said he ran across one partner after another that struggled to master Hadoop and needed help, and so the Datameer idea was born.
Datameer’s first product is only in the beta stage. If you sign up on the company Web site, you can give it a whirl. A finished version of the software should arrive by September.
Datameer plans to offer a couple different pricing models, but its basic monthly model will cost about $1,000 a server.
The company’s prospects will depend on how well it can separate from the Hadoop herd and how much broad interest Hadoop can drum up.
It remains unclear how widespread the use of the software will be with more traditional companies that would then turn to a partner and pay for help bringing Hadoop to their employees.