US, UK Big Data Firms Join Forces

Sheffield, UK firm WANdisco has been shopping in Silicon Valley, picking up big data pioneer AltoStor for $5.1m (£3.2m).

AltoStor's founders, Jagane Sundar and Dr Konstantin Shvachko are major contributors to Hadoop, the open source software at the centre of the development of big data, and the British firm says the buy will bring forward and strengthen its development of new products for the big data market. Reports suggest the two companies have already been working together on integrating AltoStor's 'Hadoop Enterprise' development and its work on bringing public cloud Hadoop behind a corporate firewall, with WANdisco's DConE technology, also geared to improving the availability and robustness of big data systems.

As a result, commercial launch of WANdisco's first big data solutions should be brought forward around a year, to the first half of 2013.

CEO David Richards comments: 'Combining our technology with the founders of the Hadoop project is a significant coup and an important aspect of this deal is that the founders of AltoStor believe in the WANdisco story - that's why they are committing to this direction for the long term.'

Web site: www.wandisco.com .