by Angela Guess
Hortonworks has partnered with Microsoft to create “a connector to link Excel with the open source Big Data processing platform… The companies previously partnered on getting Hadoop to run on Windows Server. Microsoft, of course, brings its knowledge of the inner workings of its own software and how to interface with it. Hortonworks was spun off from Yahoo!, Hadoop’s birthplace, last year. Its founding members include key ex-Yahoo staffers, including CTO Eric Baldeschwieler, former vice president of Hadoop Software Engineering.”
The article continues, “Now Hortonworks and Microsoft are working on a Hive ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) driver that extends data analysis capabilities to Excel. It’s a model that they expect will bring Hadoop-powered business intelligence functionality to the venerable spreadsheet software via Microsoft’s PowerPivot. The project is part of a broader open source collaboration that involves developing a JavaScript framework that the companies hope ‘will enable millions of JavaScript developers to perform iterative prototyping and interactive exploration of Hadoop data.’ To accomplish that, Hortonworks is rubbing elbows with a software giant that carries a lot of clout with software developers.”
photo credit: Hortonworks
