Hortonworks

Hortonworks was a United States-based software company that specialized in big data software and the enterprise deployment of Apache Hadoop. It developed the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), a distribution of Apache Hadoop designed for enterprise-grade security, governance, and scalability, and Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF), a platform for ingesting and processing streaming data. The company contributed to open-source projects in the Hadoop ecosystem, including Ambari for cluster provisioning and management, and Cloudbreak for cloud deployment.

The company was formed in 2011 from Yahoo's Hadoop development group, focusing on building an open, enterprise-grade Hadoop stack. It grew through customer deployments across industries such as finance, healthcare, and telecommunications, and provided enterprise support, training, and professional services. Hortonworks participated in the development and governance of Hadoop-related open-source projects and collaborated with partners to integrate its platform with cloud and data analytics services.

In 2019, Hortonworks merged with Cloudera in a deal valued at about $5.2 billion, forming Cloudera, Inc. The merger combined Hortonworks' emphasis on open-source governance and the HDP distribution with Cloudera's enterprise data platform and cloud strategy, creating an analytics and data management platform intended for hybrid cloud environments.

Impact and legacy: Hortonworks contributed to the Hadoop ecosystem during a period of rapid growth in big data analytics and open-source governance, notably through Ambari and related tools. The merger with Cloudera signaled a consolidation of enterprise Hadoop distributions and helped shape the direction of large-scale data platforms in the following years.