Hortonworks Acquires XA Secure, Will Launch HDP Security in June

Hortonworks, which provides an open source Apache Hadoop data platform, has acquired Hadoop security company XA Secure. With the acquisition, Hortonworks will immediately begin incorporating XA Secure technology into the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP).

HDP is a multi-workload data processing platform for enterprises that features Enterprise Hadoop, an open source framework to help enterprises gain insight from large amounts of structured and unstructured data, Hortonworks said.

XA Secure, meanwhile, provides a cross-platform security layer for Hadoop that is built from the ground up.

Balaji Ganesan, XA Secure’s founder and CEO, said he believes Hortonworks and XA Secure will be able to further enhance enterprise-grade security within Hadoop.

“The teams at Hortonworks and XA Secure saw the unique market opportunity to lead and build the right set of security intelligence and management capabilities into the fabric of the Hortonworks Data Platform,” Ganesan said in a prepared statement. “We are thrilled to be joining Hortonworks to further execute our joint vision and lead the community-based initiative to provide enterprise-grade security within Hadoop as only an open community can.”

Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden also commented on the acquisition in a prepared statement:

“XA Secure will play an instrumental role in our company’s strategic vision for unlocking the potential of enterprise Hadoop. This move is consistent with our approach of delivering the enterprise capabilities that Hadoop users expect, completely in open source.”

In a blog post, Hortonworks Vice President of Product Management Tim Hall said XA Secure technology will be incorporated into HDP Security, a Hadoop security product that will include:

“With the introduction of XA Secure to HDP and eventually, the broader Hadoop community, enterprises will benefit from a comprehensive approach to central security policy administration for the core security requirements and coordinated enforcement across all Hadoop workloads from batch, interactive SQL and real-time,” Hall added.

According to Hall, Hortonworks plans to release HDP Security next month as part of its HDP Enterprise Plus subscription.