Big data firm Cloudera sets up shop in London's Tech City
Enterprise firm Cloudera has chosen East London's Tech City to host its new headquarters for its swelling European, Middle East and African (EMEA) markets.
The firm opened its Rivington Street, London office today at the dead center of the Tech City in Shoreditch, and a stone's throw away from the financial heart of the country's capital.
Cloudera's office opening is in response to the increasing enterprise demand for its Apache Hadoop technology in the region.
In 2011 when the Tech City brand was first taking off, criticism spread that many of the firms in the East London area were not as techy as the U.K. coalition government might have hoped.
Since growing to almost twice the size in the space of around 18 months, the ratio is still weighted against non-technology firms, but remains home to some significant tech goodness. Tech City is home to around 1,300 major technology firms, not limited to Google, Intel and Cisco — and now Cloudera.
Cloudera specializes in the big data platform, and claims to "set the standard" for Apache Hadoop in the enterprise. The open-source software framework supports a wide range of data-intensive applications that allow customers to dig deeper into the vast amount of data they hold.
According to IDC research, 40 percent of EU-based organizations intend to "considerably increase" their use of big data in the next 12 months.
In prepared remarks, Cloudera chief executive Mike Olson said:
Demand for Hadoop in the European market is exploding, providing fertile ground from which to grow our business and support the proliferation of Apache Hadoop in enterprises across the region.
Late last, Cloudera raised $65 million to make big data even bigger.
But the firm faces competition, notably from EMC, which rolled out its own Hadoop distribution in February. The new distro, dubbed Pivotal HD, puts Cloudera firmly in EMC's crosshairs. By creating its own distro instead of a Hadoop connector, it improves overall query time.