Hadoop distributor Cloudera to launch European headquarters in London

Cloudera has announced plans to open a European headquarters in London in the first quarter of 2013

By Sophie Curtis, London | Monday, 10 December 2012
Cloudera, one of the major distributors of Hadoop-based software and services for the enterprise, has announced plans to open a European headquarters in the UK in the first quarter of 2013.

The move has been made possible thanks to a new $65 million (£40m) funding round led by Accel Partners, with support from Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel, and Meritech Capital Partners.

"We will be opening a London office in early 2013, with a view to establish and accelerate our European expansion plan," said Kirk Dunn, Chief Operating Officer at Cloudera, who was a key speaker at the Big Data Analytics 2012 conference in London yesterday.

"London is not only a gateway to Europe, but its access to both customers and IT talent is second to none. London initiatives such as Tech City and Digital Shoreditch are testimony to London's growing technology community."

Dunn added that Cloudera wants to be at the epicentre of the right skills base, with access to Big Data database architects and data scientists who are taking advantage of open source Hadoop software.

The $65 million investment will also fund global sales growth and fuel continued development of its platform for Big Data in support of its growing enterprise customer base, Cloudera said.

Cloudera has more than 400 partners, 50 certified technologies and 15 certified connectors worldwide. Its customer base includes more than half of the Fortune 50, as well as companies such as AOL, eBay, Expedia, Morgan Stanley, Nokia, RIM, and The Walt Disney Company.

In Europe, Cloudera has already signed up customers such as online gaming company King.com, which implemented Cloudera Enterprise to get greater value from the massive amounts of data and information that is generated by gamers across multiple platforms.

Doug Cutting, creator of Hadoop and chief architect at Cloudera, also recently revealed to Techworld that the UK government is in discussions with Cloudera to determine how it can best make use of Big Data technologies.
Cutting said that he had met with the UK government's Policy Exchange team in October to discuss how it can use Big Data "without freaking people out and becoming Big Brother".

"They don't have a profit motive to make them want to use this but they know there are efficiencies. So they are looking for efficiencies where they can save money, govern better for less money, without causing a scandal. That, in a nutshell, is the problem they're trying to solve," he said.

Commenting on the new investment, Ping Li, partner at Accel Partners and head of the Accel Big Data Fund, said that Cloudera is "accelerating on its position as the standard for Hadoop in the enterprise".