Open Source Fact and Fiction

Alan Shimel

Previous Article Next Article

Responding To Critics, HPCC Releases Source Code

After initial announcement, would be Hadoop competitor releases its code to the wild

By Alan Shimel on Tue, 09/13/11 - 11:46am.

. What's this?

I initially wrote about HPCC, the open source high powered computing off shoot from Lexis-Nexis almost 3 months ago. At that time the start up within the large company announced that after years of development and support, they were going to open source the engine that drives their clustered high performance computing engine. I had a great meeting with Armando Escalante, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, LexisNexis Risk Solutions and President of HPCC as well as his key staff members to discuss their big plans to take on Hadoop in the Big Data market.

Since that time while HPCC has been moving along on its plans to be more competitive and offer another alternative, some in the open source community wanted to see Lexis-Nexis jump into the open source pool with both feet. If they really wanted HPCC to be open source, then they had to make the source code available. Yesterday, HPCC finally took the plunge and has now released the source code to anyone who would like to download it. The source is available on GitHub right here.

I spoke to Armando about this big next step for HPCC last week. He sounded a bit like a nervous parent about to send his child off to college. Hoping they come home better, smarter and more mature, but also knowing that on their own anything can happen. But he recognized that releasing the code was a must if HPCC is going to seriously challenge Hadoop in the Big Data market.

Hadoop continues to gain lots of support and momentum in the marketplace. Even with Lexis-Nexis behind them, HPCC has to considered an underdog in its quest to compete. The HPCC team is really trying hard to set up local communities though. To that end they are doing a series of "meetups" throughout the country. There is one right here in my town, Boca Raton, Fl on September 15th that I will try to attend. If you like in or near a major city, there is probably one near you too. You should check the link.

The meetups will serve as both introduction, training, case studies and social networking events as Lexis-Nexis tries to seed a community to adopt and run with HPCC. In the meantime they are still solidly behind the project with a full team of developers continuing to evolve and develop the engine.

How much headway they can make against Hadoop remains to be seen, it should be interesting to watch if this town is big enough for both.

Tags

What is Tech Briefcase?

TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more

Bookmark content

Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.

Search and Store

Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.

View Anywhere

Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.

Don't have an account yet?

About Open Source Fact and Fiction

As co-founder and Managing Partner at The CISO Group, Alan Shimel is responsible for driving the vision and mission of the company. The CISO Group offers security consulting and PCI compliance management for the payment card industry. Prior to The CISO Group, Alan was the Chief Strategy Officer at StillSecure. Shimel was the public persona of StillSecure as it grew from start up to helping defend some of the largest and most sensitive networks in the world.

Shimel is an often-cited personality in the technology community and is a sought-after speaker at industry and government conferences and events. His commentary about the state of security, open source and life is followed closely by many industry insiders via his blog and podcast, "Ashimmy, After All These Years" (www.ashimmy.com). Alan is now also a regular contributor to The CISO Group’s security.exe blog and podcast.

Alan has helped build several successful technology companies by combining a strong business background with a deep knowledge of technology. His legal background, long experience in the field, and New York street smarts combine to form a unique personality.

Disclosure: The CISO Group sells a software-as-a-service PCI compliance application called SAQPro. The company is independent and does not represent any other vendor's products as a reseller.

Policy on comments: Respectful discussion is welcomed! However comments that use inappropriate language, consist of name calling or personal attacks, or include accusations of wrongdoing are not appropriate. Those comments will be deleted or edited.