LexisNexis open sources its Hadoop killer

LexisNexis is releasing a set of open source data-processing tools that it says outperforms Hadoop and even handles workloads that Hadoop presently cannot. The technology (and new business line) is called HPCC Systems, and was created 10 years ago within the LexisNexis Risk Solutions division that analyzes huge amounts of data for its customers in intelligence, financial services and other high-profile industries. There have been calls for a legitimate alternative to Hadoop, and this certainly looks like one.

According to Armando Escalante, CTO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the company decided to release HPCC now because it wanted to get the technology into the community before Hadoop became the de facto option for big data processing. Escalante told me during a phone call that he thinks of Hadoop as “a guy with a machete in front of a jungle — they made a trail,” but that he thinks HPCC is superior.

But in order to compete for mindshare and developers, he said, the company felt it had to open source the technology. One big thing Hadoop has going for it is its open source model, Escalante explained, which attracts a lot of developers and a lot of innovation. If his company wanted HPCC to “remain relevant” and keep improving through new use cases and ideas from a new community, the time for release was now and open source had to be the model.

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