This blog by Cheryle Custer, Director Strategic Alliance Marketing Hortonworks, has been republished with the author’s permission.

It was just a little over 100 days ago that 15 industry leaders in the Big Data space announced the formation of the Open Data Platform (ODP) initiative. We’d like to let you know what has been going on in that time, to bring you a preview of what you can expect in the next few months and let you know how you can become involved.

Some Background

What is the Open Data Platform Initiative?
The Open Data Platform Initiative (ODP) is an enterprise-focused shared industry effort focused on simplifying adoption and promoting the use and advancing the state of Apache Hadoop® and Big Data technologies for the enterprise. It is a non-profit organization being created by folks that help to create:  Apache, Eclipse, Linux, OpenStack, OpenDaylight, Open Networking Foundation, OSGI, WSI (Web Services Interoperability), UDDI , OASIS, Cloud Foundry Foundation and many others.

The organization relies on the governance of the Apache Software Foundation community to innovate and deliver the Apache project technologies included in the Odp Core while using a ‘one member one vote’ philosophy where every member decides what’s on the roadmap. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting a number of blogs to describe in more detail how the organization is governed and how everyone can participate.

What is the Core?
The ODP Core provides a common set of open source technologies that currently includes: Apache Hadoop® (inclusive of HDFS, YARN, and MapReduce) and Apache® Ambari. ODP relies on the governance of the Apache Software Foundation community to innovate and deliver the Apache project technologies included in the ODP core. Once the ODP members and processes are well established, the scope of the ODP Core will expand to include other open source projects.

Benefits of the ODP Core
The ODP core is a set of open source Hadoop technologies designed to provide a standardized core that big data solution providers software and hardware developers can use to deliver compatible solutions rooted in open source that unlock customer choice.

By delivering on a vision of “verify once, run anywhere”, everyone benefits:

• For Apache Hadoop® technology vendors, reduced R&D costs that come from a shared qualification effort
• For Big Data application solution providers, reduced R&D costs that come from more predictable and better qualified releases
• Improved interoperability within the platform and simplified integration with existing systems in support of a broad set of use cases
• Less friction and confusion for Enterprise customers and vendors
• Ability to redirect resources towards higher value efforts

100 Day Progress Report

In the 100 days since the announcement, we’ve made some great progress:

Four Platforms Shipping
At Hadoop Summit in Brussels in April, we announced the availability of four Hadoop platforms all based on a vision of a common ODP core: Infosys Information Platform, IBM Open Platform, Hortonworks Data Platformand Pivotal HD. The commercial delivery of ODP based distributions across multiple industry leading vendors immediately after the launch of the initiative demonstrates the momentum behind ODP to accelerate the delivery of compatible Hadoop distributions and the simplification it brings to the ecosystem using that as an industry standard.

New Members and New Participation Levels
In addition to revealing that Telstra is one of the founding Platinum members of the ODP, we’ve added new nine new members, including BMC, DataTorrent,PLDT, Squid Solutions, Syncsort, Unifi, zData, Zettaset. We welcome these new members and are looking forward to their participation and their announcements. We also announced new membership level to provide an easy entrée for any company to participate in the ODP. The Silver level of membership allows companies to have a direct voice into the future of big data and contribute people, tests, and code to accelerate executing on the vision.

Community Collaboration at the Bug Bash
ODP Member Alitscale lead the efforts on a Hadoop Community Bug Bash. This unique event for the Apache Hadoop community, along with co-sponsors Hortonworks, Huawei, Infosys, and Pivotal, saw over 150 participants from eight countries and nine time zones, to strengthen Hadoop and honor the work of the community by reviewing and resolving software patches. Read more about the Bug Bash, where 186 issues were resolved either with closure or patches committed to code. Nice job everyone!  You can participate in upcoming bug bashes, so stay tuned.

Technical Working Group and the ASF
Senior engineers and architects from the ODP member companies have come together as a Technical Working Group (TWG). The goal of the TWG is to jump-start the work required to produce ODP core deliverables and to seed the technical community overseeing the future evolution of the ODP core. Delivering on the promise of “verify once and run anywhere” TWG is building h certification guidelines for “compatibility” (for software running on top of ODP) and “compliance” (for ODP platforms). We have scheduled a second TWG face-to-face meeting at Hadoop Summit and where committers, PMC and ASF members will be meeting to continue these discussions.

What’s Next?

Many of the member companies will be at Hadoop Summit in San Jose.

While you’re at Hadoop Summit, you can attend the IBM Meet Up and hear more about the ODP. Stay tuned to this blog as well – we’ll use this as a platform to inform you of new developments and provide you insight on how the ODP works.

Want to know more about the ODP, here are a few reference documents

• ODP FAQ
• ODP Momentum press release
• Hortonworks Blog on how ODP works with Apache (scroll down to see ODP discussion)
• Pivotal blog
• IBM blog
• Infosys IIP Press release