Hortonworks has introduced a new support subscription model for its Hadoop-based big data platform, in a bid to appeal more to customers with hybrid deployments as well as intentions on full-scale migration to the cloud.
The new Flex Support Subscription is transferable between on-premises and cloud deployments, and provides the flexibility the market demands, Hortonworks said in a statement:
Customers gain freedom to meet fluctuating business demands not just in monthly capacity, but also in choice of infrastructure. The single support subscription encompasses HDP on-prem and in the cloud, as well as cloud services providing expert guidance to optimize Apache Spark, ETL and analytics workloads inHortonworks Data Cloud for [Amazon Web Services].
Some 25 percent of Hortonworks customers already run their big data platorms on AWS. The move toward Flex makes sense given how cloud is the fastest-growing choice for deployment models.
Flex's structure provides even more flexibility by introducing a "node month" concept, whereby customers can buy credits for support and then draw them down based on how many node months they actually use in the cloud, notes Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Doug Henschen. Overall, Flex is a "no-brainer" for Hortonworks, he adds.
However, Flex support subscriptions on their own would still require a separate agreement with the underlying cloud vendor. That's why Constellation favors cloud services where the platform and underlying infrastructure are supported by the same vendor, Henschen says.
Hortonworks offers just this through Hortonworks Data Cloud for AWS, a managed service. Microsoft uses Hortonworks' distribution underneath its HDInsight managed service on Azure, but in that case the Flex credit scheme wouldn't apply, Henschen notes.
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