Hortonworks is 100% Open Source. Hortonworks does a great job in managing all different components of Hadoop.
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
It enables customers to perform sentimental analysis from social media data to engineering analytics. Name Node High Availability is still not stable.
What is most valuable?
How has it helped my organization?
We've done multiple implementations of it. It enables customers to perform sentimental analysis from social media data to engineering analytics.
What needs improvement?
Security- Although they support Knox and Ranger and Kerberos, they are still missing attribute-level encryption features.
Name Node High Availability is still not stable (memory issues).
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Principal Consultant - Big Data with 501-1,000 employees
It is improving rapidly, but like other flavors of Hadoop there is room for improvement.
What is most valuable?
- Ambari
- Hive
- Sqoop
- Flume
- Spark
How has it helped my organization?
The Hadoop value proposition is in expanded functionality, linear scalability, and reduced software and infrastructure costs. Hadoop offers several generic frameworks for batch, real-time, and iterative processing, such as map-reduce, spark, and spark streaming. Additionally, these frameworks provide libraries for predictive analytics and machine learning. This type of expanded functionality is not easily achieved on any other single platform.
What needs improvement?
File system to provide indexed access to individual records with in-place update/delete. Also, Security integration through a common interface for authentication, authorization, disk encryption, network encryption, data access layer, data masking, etc.
Hadoop, does not provide improved performance, compared to traditional RDBMS, unless processing batches in the TB-PB range, or if the Hadoop platform has significantly more resources available.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have implemented various flavors of Hadoop over the past five years, including platform configuration and application development.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Deployment is improving rapidly, but like other flavors of Hadoop there are always issues.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability is improving rapidly, but like other flavors of Hadoop there are always issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
5/10 - Responsive, but like all flavors of Hadoop, there are too many tickets to be reasonably triaged and supported.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have implemented various flavors of Hadoop such as Hortonworks and Cloudera over the past five years, including platform configuration and application development.
How was the initial setup?
Straightforward once you know what you’re doing.
What about the implementation team?
I work for a vendor team.
What was our ROI?
ROI is one of the main reasons organization pursue Hadoop. Cost per TB is a compelling factor.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Hadoop is complex. It takes a dedicated approach from individuals with a broad range of technology skills and commitment to overcome challenges that do not normally present themselves in well-established technologies.
What other advice do I have?
Hadoop is complex. It takes a dedicated approach from individuals with a broad range of technology skills and commitment to overcome challenges that do not normally present themselves in well-established technologies.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're partners.
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Lead IT Consultant at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We've integrated our current distribution of it with Tableau, but we had issues upgrading to the newer versions, but these were resolved with their help.
What is most valuable?
The features I've found most valuable are--
- Ambari UI
- Hive
- Pig
- Hive
- Also integrated Tableau with this distribution
How has it helped my organization?
It's easy to deploy and we've used this distribution for some of our recommendation and trend analysis use cases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for almost one year.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues encountered.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We faced some issues while upgrading to newer versions with current distributions, but with their support we solved it.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
Customer service is great.
Technical Support:Technical support is great.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No, we did not use a previous solution.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented it with our in-house team.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We're partners.
Associate Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
The Ambari UI is valuable for cluster monitoring, but there are certain features that need tuning, such as the Hue UI.
What is most valuable?
From a product standpoint, their Ambari UI is incredibly valuable for cluster monitoring. It simplifies the deployment and maintenance of hosts, and we can provision, configure and test Hadoop services.
How has it helped my organization?
From an overall perspective, Hortonworks support is crucial to our operations.
What needs improvement?
As this is open source, there are certain features that need tuning, such as the Hue UI. More stability on this would be helpful.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for one year.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
As this is all new technology, we face issues at every level. However, hardware support and documentation have been instrumental in helping us resolve the majority of those issues.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had some issues with stability, but hardware support and documentation have helped us resolve most of those.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues with scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
They have outstanding customer support. Their responses are prompt, and they resolve issues quickly.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have not used a solution of this nature before.
How was the initial setup?
The set up is straightforward enough, but at every level there are many parameters to be tuned. Ensuring all these parameters are set is the complex part, as poorly set parameters can cause unwanted issues.
What about the implementation team?
We have an in-house team to do implementations. I would advise that all implementations get seen through all the way to having users smoke test applications to ensure correct functionality.
What other advice do I have?
I would suggest that if you are implementing this at an enterprise level, the support is compulsory. Additionally having a high degree of patience is key, as this is open source and road bumps can be frequent when moving at a fast pace.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Big Data Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We have faster processing times for our apps, but it needs to automate deployment on multi nodes.
What is most valuable?
There are several features that are most valuable for us--
- Hue
- Hive
- Spark
- S3
How has it helped my organization?
With it, we have faster processing times for our apps.
What needs improvement?
It needs to be quicker and to have the ability to automate deployment on multiple nodes.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for two years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Sometimes there were issues.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Sometimes there were issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Sometimes there were issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
I've not had to use it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No solution had been used previously, but we are using it alongside AWS EMR.
How was the initial setup?
It was complex to configure.
What about the implementation team?
It was done in-house.
What other advice do I have?
We provide services for product implementation, so people looking for such products can contact me.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Cyber Security and Analytics Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
We can collect data from different databases, and where the data is similar, it allows for a detailed analysis from a single data store. It could improve, though, on the ability to update data.
Valuable Features
Ease of deployment and management of the Hadoop cluster are features we've found most valuable.
Improvements to My Organization
It allows our organization to collect data from databases that are different, and where the data is similar, it allows for a detailed analysis from a single data store.
Room for Improvement
The ability to update data is an area where the product could improve.
Use of Solution
I've used it for one year.
Deployment Issues
We had an issue during deployment. You have to be sure that your base image is perfect and that your infrastructure is properly configured or issues will occur.
Customer Service and Technical Support
We don't have their paid support, but I have had discussions with their engineers and they have been extremely helpful. So based on that, I would give them 8/10.
Initial Setup
The initial setup is complex. It mainly stems from small issues that typically pop up and also a lack of experience in deploying the product. I highly suggest taking the Hortonworks Training prior to deploying.
Implementation Team
We used an in-house team. Take your time and utilize the free resources provided by Hortonworks.
ROI
At this point I don't believe I could provide a ROI as we aren't fully utilizing the product.
Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing
If possible, I would suggest paying for the professional services which would give you on-site engineers to help deploy the cluster.
Other Solutions Considered
We did look at Cloudera, but due to having literally no money to spend for the project, we chose Hortonworks due to its being completely free and open source.
Other Advice
Take your time and script as much as you can so that all base images are the same.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Data science engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
We are capable of processing various data science tasks, e.g. natural language processing or log processing.
What is most valuable?
- Open-source
- Big community
How has it helped my organization?
It is a different paradigm than standard relational databases. We can also process different tasks then just those related to the standard database world. That said, we are capable of processing various data science tasks, e.g. natural language processing or log processing.
What needs improvement?
- Stability
- It needs to be more mature
- Security
- User friendliness
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used it for three years alongside MapR and Cloudera.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Almost every part of the Hadoop ecosystem has its problems and bugs.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Almost every part of the Hadoop ecosystem has its problems and bugs.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Almost every part of the Hadoop ecosystem has its problems and bugs.
How are customer service and technical support?
The paid service is pretty good, but if you don't pay, there is documentation available in the community which is pretty good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I slightly experienced Cloudera which is very similar to Hortonworks, but there are parts which are not open source. I'm working more with Hortnoworks because all its parts are open source. and my company has a longer partnership with Hortnoworks
How was the initial setup?
It is easy if you have good administrators. It is also easy if you want to just play with it on your laptop. For real work and stability, I definitely recommend some paid support.
What about the implementation team?
I was involved in multiple projects. Usually, it was done in-house with paid support.
What was our ROI?
Every project is different. Since Hadoop is an infrastructure for a long period there is no simple ROI. Also, each customer has different expectations.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We have a partnership with all major Hadoop vendors.
Business Objects Consultant at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We can perform sentiment analysis on Twitter data, but it needs a better UI.
What is most valuable?
Its flexibility is the most valuable feature because you can leverage any Hadoop component and take full advantage of its open source capabilities.
How has it helped my organization?
We're able to perform sentiment analysis on Twitter data.
What needs improvement?
It needs a better UI.
For how long have I used the solution?
I used it for five months, one year ago.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
It requires too much coding work; we're not good Java and Python developers.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
They are detailed and informational.
Technical Support:We got stuck with Java job development and were able to get assistance from tech support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
No previous solution was used.
How was the initial setup?
It was straightforward since we have Linux resources.
What about the implementation team?
We did it in-house.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
- Datameer
- Cloudera
What other advice do I have?
You need to be tech savvy.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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