Starburst Announces “Future-Proof Hadoop” Q2 Software Release

Starburst, the Presto company, today announced core features in the Q2 release of Starburst Enterprise Presto 338-e geared towards helping the Hadoop community future-proof their data currently in Hadoop; offering consistent data access for companies preparing to migrate to cloud object storage.

The role of Hadoop in the big data landscape is evolving. In a recent Gartner report, “Choosing the Right Path When Exploring Hadoop’s Future” Analysts Merv Adrian and Rick Greenwald stated, “Hadoop projects often were undertaken with unrealistic expectations, and failures resulted.”

The full Gartner report is available here.

While many companies have plans to migrate from Hadoop, COVID-19 has resulted in budget cuts, leaving data & infrastructure teams needing to prolong the lifespan of data in their on-premises Hadoop. Starburst’s recent release has many features that optimize data access in Hadoop while companies plan their migration for a later date.

“While Hadoop’s future may be uncertain, we want to help Hadoop’s massive existing user base more efficiently access their data both on-premises and in the cloud,” said Matt Fuller, Starburst co-founder and VP of product. “Today, many deployments remain on-premises, but that is rapidly changing as the benefits of the cloud are impossible to ignore. Many of our customers want consistent and secure data access as they pursue cloud migrations, particularly in the financial services vertical where Hadoop gained very strong adoption.”

Faster and more secure access where your data lives today

The latest Starburst release includes the following features to support prolonging the current Hadoop implementation lifespan:

• Fast access to data in Cloudera CDP 7.1. Starburst now offers read support on CDP 7.1, which was released by Cloudera last month. Many customers are migrating even though previous integrations are not yet supported. Starburst’s read support quickly helps customers gain faster SQL-based access to their data in CDP 7.
• More secure access. Starburst has introduced SQL standard authorization for its Ranger integration. It is now possible to manage access control and permissions directly via SQL.
• MapR support. Starburst now supports MapR.
• Improved Data Lake performance. Storage caching can reduce load on HDFS and object storage systems, improve query performance and reduce network traffic.

Helping organizations ready for cloud migration

The Gartner report further showcases the case for cloud migration. Analysts Merv Adrian and Rick Greenwald state, “The functionality provided by cloud object stores substantially exceeds that which is natively provided by HDFS offerings at this time without requiring data center personnel to manage.” The report advises necessary considerations across two migration scenarios: on-premises Hadoop to cloud-based Hadoop, and migrating from HDFS to cloud object storage.

In this release, Starburst is helping organizations plan for consistency of data access no matter which migration path they choose. By providing an abstracted query acceleration layer, Starburst Enterprise Presto can access data anywhere, while allowing teams to use their existing SQL skills. This means that no matter where the data lives– Hadoop on-premises, Hadoop on the cloud, or already within cloud object store–teams can benefit from uninterrupted access. Starburst ensures this with a consistent roadmap that pursues ongoing performance and connectivity enhancements. Two critical features in this release are:

• Elasticsearch query passthrough, which allows users to embed any valid Elasticsearch DSL query in their SQL query in Presto, improving overall query performance.
• A new native table operator in the Teradata Parallel Direct Connector, which supports a higher degree of concurrency.

“Many organizations are moving from Hadoop file systems towards object storage,” said Justin Borgman, Starburst Co-Founder and CEO. “The current economic climate may require companies to delay their plans to migrate, and we want to help companies get more out of their existing Hadoop environment while setting them up for consistent data access when it’s time to migrate. While the Hadoop era may be nearing its end, we have Hadoop to thank for the advent of data lakes and open file formats.”

About Starburst

Starburst is on a mission to power analytics anywhere. Founded by the creators of open-source Presto, Starburst unlocks the value of data by making it fast and easy to access anywhere. Starburst is the only commercial open source company that queries data across any database, making it instantly actionable for organizations. With Starburst, teams can lower the total cost of their infrastructure and analytics investments, prevent vendor lock-in, and use the tools that work best for their business.

Starburst and the Starburst logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Starburst Data, Inc.

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