 Welcome to CUBE Conversations. I'm Stu Miniman and joining me is Jeff Kelly. We're here at the Wikibon World Headquarters in Marlboro, Massachusetts. Mark Andreessen's always quoted as saying that software is eating the world. And many have said that in the enterprise software world that open source is eating that world. So today we're going to really talk about the three areas that we talk about at Wikibon. Jeff, big data in your space and mine, the infrastructure and cloud and all the things that are going on in our research in the event world about open source. So let's start with big data, Jeff. Big news, I've been hearing a lot about ODP. Can you, just for those that aren't familiar with the fracas going on, what is ODP? Who's involved, set the players on the board for us? Absolutely, so ODP stands for Open Data Platform and it's essentially a new industry consortium spearheaded by Pivotal and Hortonworks. And the idea here is really to bring together a number of industry players in the big data space to coalesce around essentially a core Hadoop kernel, kind of a core standards around Hadoop that will enable all the other ODP members essentially to build applications that are interoperable with one another on top of that platform. So the idea really is to help spur adoption of Hadoop in the enterprise, which for all the attention that Hadoop has gotten over the years, adoption is still pretty low in terms of enterprise adoption and certainly low when you look at practitioners that are really heavily into it and they're actually running mission critical applications on Hadoop. So the goal here really is to help establish some core standards around Hadoop, give some confidence to enterprises that they can invest in Hadoop. It's going to be around for the long haul that their vendors of choice, their strategic suppliers are all in on it and are building applications on top of it. And that's kind of the goal of the Open Data Platform. All right, so Jeff, if I remember right, Pivotal actually had their own Hadoop distribution and now I hear Hortonworks has evolved, so what's different than just saying, hey, Pivotal dumped theirs and they're endorsing Hortonworks? Well, and this is where we start to get a little bit of the frackage that you mentioned earlier. So absolutely, Pivotal has had and has its own Hadoop distribution and has not discontinued its Hadoop distribution. IBM, another founding member of the Open Data Platform, likewise has its own Hadoop distribution and they're not getting rid of it. But if you mentioned Pivotal in particular, so back in the fall, Pivotal laid off a lot of their Hadoop distribution staff, essentially those folks who were working on the distribution itself, the core layer. And I think what Pivotal has come to the understanding that or the decision that where they're gonna really monetize around big data, it's not necessarily on the distribution layer but higher up the stack. So a couple of weeks ago during big data SV week and big data week in San Jose, Pivotal open sourced there in addition to joining the ODP and forming the ODP, open sourced some of their big data products. So their database like the Green Plum database, Hock, which essentially is Green Plum as applied to the Hadoop ecosystem. Gemfire for more real time, big data analytics. So the idea here is they're gonna open source those products and drive value higher up the stack. They're gonna give that away, kind of a basic addition and for some of the more enterprise features you pay for that. So the idea essentially is that they recognize that's where they're gonna drive values higher up the stack and while they have not discontinued their Hadoop distribution nor has IBM, it appears to me based on the framework that the ODP has put out there that really these players are kind of putting their bet on Hortonworks as that core Hadoop distribution. You know what they're saying is essentially let the market decide. There are still customers that wanna use the Pivotal distribution, the IBM distribution, great. If at some point that number of customers that wants to use that distribution dwindles, you may see that go away. But for me, this is sort of like the ODP members sprinkling the holy water if you will on Hortonworks data platform as the core Hadoop distribution. And of course there's a competitive angle here kind of in the other camp and notably not in the big data, sorry, the open data platform is Cloudera who obviously very tightly aligned with Intel, huge investor in Cloudera. And so you're seeing these competitive camps emerge. Kind of the ODP, NIST members on one side, Cloudera Intel on the other. Yeah, what about, I mean, you've even got MAPR in there. How did the other players fit? Well, right, so MAPR is another good one to point out. So MAPR and Cloudera are essentially fighting a two front war in my opinion at this point. So they're building out their Hadoop distribution, they're still playing in that space, but they also wanna sell up the stack as well, like other members of the ODP. So for them to join the ODP doesn't make a lot of sense because really the ODP is enabling all of their competitors. You can argue, there's a lot of argument going back and forth in the market. Is the ODP a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it companies like IBM essentially trying to swoop in, take advantage of the open source Hadoop community without really essentially buying their way in and not providing code, and trying to unduly influence the Hadoop community. And that's what you're hearing from the Cloudera camp and kind of the anti-ODP camp. And there could potentially be an argument made for that, but you can certainly say it's a smart move on the chessboard, if you will, by Hortonworks to align more closely with all these ODP members, really lines up a formidable force against Cloudera and MapR. Now, whether the ODP actually executes on their vision and remains to be seen very early days, we haven't seen them actually do anything yet, so that remains to be seen. But I think from a strategic point of view, it makes sense for Hortonworks to take this approach. Well, so in a couple of months, we've got the big Hadoop Summit, which Hortonworks is the major player behind that and we'll cover that. So what's on your roadmap, Jeff? How does open source fit into kind of the research you're doing and lead up to a Hadoop Summit? Well, I think open source, without question, is playing a prominent role in the big data space. I talked back at Big Data SV about what we're seeing in the market in terms of the different vendor strategies, and I think we're about to see some consolidation happen, whereas the market matures, you're going to see members like IBM, ODP members like IBM, Pivotal and others, probably make some acquisitions, you're going to see some contraction. If you look at the floor of Hadoop World a couple of weeks ago, there's just so many vendors out there. I don't think long-term the market can sustain that many. The good news is, and this is where open source comes in, unlike other markets where there's no really open source component, when you see consolidation, oftentimes that's when the innovation stops. The big players come in and they take the innovation that's already happened, package it, use their channels to get it out to the enterprise and create a really big market. The good news in the big data space is there's that open source foundation where you're going to see continued innovation because a lot of the people, a lot of the committers essentially who are creating these new technologies to leverage big data are not necessarily vendors, they're actually practitioners, they're the Facebooks of the world. There are Netflix and other companies like this. They're not going to stop innovating and open sourcing that. For them, the value is not necessarily the technology but how they use it. That's their competitive differentiator. So they have no problem open sourcing this and allowing others to use it and build on it. So that's kind of the wild card in this market is the open source component where I think we're going to see consolidation but continued innovation. In terms of how that impacts our research, well, of course, we're working right now on our market forecast for the big data market. You'll see that in the next couple of weeks on Wikibon. Open source plays a big role about how these different vendors actually commercialize and make money on their products. Definitely changes the equation. So there's that angle. And then in terms of kind of events you mentioned Hadoop Summit, we will be there. The Cube will be there live covering the events to probably three days. We're working on some of the details but we'll certainly be there covering all the news. We'll be talking to a lot of practitioners which is always fun. We'll see what's actually happening on the ground and the enterprise. And we'll be releasing some research as well. This is out in June for the Hadoop Summit around our big data adoption survey. Should be timed around that same timeframe. So a lot coming from us on the big data front. Excellent. Great ecosystem show and sounds like a lot of research on there looking forward to that. Absolutely. So let's turn the table. Let's get your opinion on open source and how it plays in a couple other areas which are obviously core to Wikibon that being infrastructure and cloud. Let's start with infrastructure. I know Open Compute event is next week. Tell us a little bit about that and kind of what you're seeing from an infrastructure perspective in terms of open source. Sure. Jeff, it's interesting if you look who talk about open source impacting software, it's not just impacting software, it's actually impacting hardware. And that's the Open Compute project or what we call OCP. They've got their summit next week in San Francisco. We're going to have the Cube there for the second year. And this is an initiative that Facebook kicked off to really allow, you know, starts with the hyperscale players but to really build that new substrate of infrastructure that all of these software components can sit on top. So we'll talk in the cloud section about things like OpenStack, as Linux and more platform three environments, you know, platform three applications like your Hadoop that you were talking about, all these mobile applications, you know, how can I build an environment that it really works well for them and it becomes much more standardized and that's where OCP fits in. So we're going to be at that show next week. It's really an interesting, you know, a set of companies that are there. Last year, the big news that came out was that Microsoft donated a server architecture that they designed for it. Really a blade server architecture built for that and people were like, wow, Microsoft, not only don't I think of them from kind of the compute standpoint, but hugely involved in open source now. You know, I think many of us, you know, are shocked when we hear Microsoft continually coming up in a discussion of open source. So, you know, big moves and kudos to them for how they've progressed on that piece so far. You know, I spent a lot of time looking at the networking component of this and the open compute project isn't just about compute. Networking pieces have fit in some of that in the compute layer and some of that in the switch layer in the networking space. There's a new term that I heard about a couple of months ago. It's called the bright box. So many people have heard of white boxes. White boxes is just kind of a generic term. The bright box is how do I take kind of that white box but make it really a more fully baked solution because in the infrastructure world, what we don't want is just to say, hey, there's lots of chips and boards out there. Why don't you go build your own? Because the enterprise just doesn't have time for that. They don't have the expertise for that. So who can help put together solutions to help bring those pieces together? This is where open compute comes in. This is where a whole number of companies in the networking space, companies like Cumulus Networks, which makes a operating system for networking that is separate from the hardware. Another company, Pica 8, who is helping to that supply chain of the kind of white box, bright box to help get that into the marketplace. So, I mean, a ton going on. I tell you, Jeff, there's just been more changes in the infrastructure in the last few years than it's really hard to keep track of. Of course, the other part of this conversation around infrastructure is cloud. And what's happening in that space? You've got OpenStack, you've got OpenStack Summit, you've got DockerCon coming up as well. Talk a little bit about what's going on in that space. All right, so let's start with OpenStack first. So the big shift we've seen over the last, I'd say year, definitely, is we now have a lot more of the big players involved. So, Jeff, you talked about IBM. IBM is, you know, many of the things that they're doing and usually what they're leading with are open source related. So their soft layer acquisition, layering on top of that blue mix, which leverages cloud foundry, goes back to the pivotal discussion we were having. And OpenStack is one of the big pushes that they have. Of course, HP has a huge effort there. And you've got companies like Cisco and EMC, Intel, Red Hat, all going after this, as opposed to last year, we talked about all of these little distributions that were out there. There's been a number of exits since last year's event. Cisco bought MetaCloud, EMC bought Cloud Scaling. Morantis is still holding strong in there as kind of the independent distribution and they've got a number of partnerships they're doing. So OpenStack, you're getting some of the bigger, you know, companies involved there. And, you know, there is slowly being a shift from developing the platform to using the platform. And it'd be great to see actually, do we have revenue? So I was actually recently at the SolidFire Analyst Day. One of the numbers that blew me away, SolidFire for those that don't know, they're an all-flash array company but they're really trying to be more than just a storage company. They really started out in the service provider space. And in 2014, 37% of their revenue was on solutions that were deploying into OpenStack. So obviously they're winning a much greater percent of OpenStack than they are in the overall storage market. But, you know, that's not just service providers. Those are enterprises also that are using what SolidFire is doing. So, you know, starting to see some real traction. Big customer case study that came out from the OpenStack Foundation recently with Walmart. Walmart has this whole group of Walmart labs. If I think if I remember right, they've got 2,600 employees in this lab group and they say we're going full in on OpenStack. So, you know, Walmart realizing that they need to have really that cloud and mobile capabilities but they're not going to turn to somebody like a Walmart, I'm sorry, like an Amazon because that's their chief competition on the retail side. So instead, they're going to leverage OpenStack which gives them flexibility and control of their own environment. Really interesting one. I'm hoping I get to dig in with them a little bit. The OpenStack summit in May. Walmart has a long history of, you know, buying things on, you know, thin margins and then beating the heck out of their suppliers when it comes to getting support. I mean, Walmart's known in general for squeezing the price out of everything. So if, you know, they have enough faith and open source in general and OpenStack specifically that they're going all in and that's a huge commitment to say that they're going to have thousands of employees working on this, having to do the development themselves. I mean, wow. So that's the OpenStack piece. I mean, I think one thing is for sure that OpenStack is invading the enterprise and it's clear it's going to play an important role going forward when, especially when you see companies like Walmart starting to embrace it. Yeah, so you also mentioned Docker. So Docker, Jeff, we've talked a number of times on these. Docker is probably the hottest technology that I've seen in my career in IT. And, you know, Docker, you know, their event DockerCon this year is expected to be 2,000 people at the event and if they wanted to, they probably could have 4,000. It's going to be in San Francisco and we're really excited that we're going to have the cube there this year. I got to go in person last year and it was, you know, far none of the most exciting event that I went to last year. I mean, anytime you can go get to listen to the architects and engineers from, you know, Google and Yahoo and those guys that are just, you know, really the tip of the spear on trying all of these new hot technologies. So, you know, Docker and the whole containerization movement is really exciting. You know, Docker, of course, is, you know, maturing greatly, building a great ecosystem out there. So, you know, a lot of the big companies, you got, you know, Google and Microsoft and others that will be at the table here and showing how they're helping to build and mature this ecosystem. This week, actually, Docker made a small acquisition, actually, some cube alums and friends, Socket Plane. So, congrats to those guys. They were helping to really take SDN, you know, networking, you know, enhancements and bring them to the Docker community. So now you've got a networking team inside Docker. They still got some security issues that they'll want to work on and a lot of work that the ecosystem's going to grow, but, you know, Docker is just, you know, growing super fast and is really a champion of that open source ethos and how fast you can really build something because, you know, I remember talking to the CEO of Pivotal Polymerits, he said, you know, the reason they went with open source is because the standards just aren't fast enough and there's no way you can develop it as fast if you don't, you know, embrace open source. So, you know, huge wave, you know, so many companies and just, you know, radically, you know, changing the marketplace. Absolutely, like I said, you know, open source is changing the way enterprise technology is developed, procured, deployed. So it's a big movement and obviously Wikibon we're all over the open source movement covering it every step of the way. Yeah, all right, yeah, so Jeff, you know, on my standpoint, we've got a bunch more research we'll be doing on the infrastructure standpoint, really trying to help customers understand, you know, moving from some of the bespoke infrastructure to more platforms, in many cases embracing open source, what do things like the white box and bright box, you know, solutions mean to huge deployments because, you know, enterprise is still going to buy solutions at the end of the day and those pieces need to be put together, they need to be tested and they need to work because I want it, in my environment, to just go in faster, but open source really allows the community to go back to the OCP discussion. Facebook doesn't want to do that development and own it themselves forever. If the open source community can all contribute and help support it long term, it's much more sustainable and we get that virtuous cycle of the community giving back. So a lot of research we're going to be pumping out over the next few months, a ton of events on theCUBE. And any closing remarks, Jeff? Well, it's been an exciting time. I mean, you know, I think we, you know, going into a couple of weeks ago from a big data perspective, we expected a fun week in San Jose, a big data SV and we certainly got it. A lot of news happening in the open source space clearly on the infrastructure and cloud space as well. So just echo what you said. You'll see a lot more great research from Wikibon in this space over the coming weeks and months. So keep an eye out for that. Check out premium.wikibon.com for our breaking research. And yeah, I mean, it's going to be a fun time. Yeah, and as always, you know, please feel free to reach out to myself, to Jeff, any of the Wikibon team, as Jeff said, new websites coming out, you know, once we hit the next month, I think we're on planes for a couple of months and lost time to Vegas and San Francisco and everything, so I'm at Stu on Twitter. Jeffrey F. Kelly is Jeff. premium.wikibon.com is the primary website where you're getting the research notes. Please give us any feedback you've got. Always welcome the community's input and thank you for joining us for this CUBE conversation and look for lots more content coming out from us at the Wikibon office, as well as on the road at theCUBE. SiliconANGLE.tv is where you can see all the upcoming events. I'll be at most of the open source infrastructure in Cloud One, Jeff will be at the Big Data Shows and thanks so much for joining us.