Hortonworks bags US-gov inspired Big Data tech

Hortonworks is buying dataflow specialist Onyara, making the Hadoop-simplifying tech for use in the Internet of Things (IoT) its third corporate purchase.

Financial terms of the deal were not revealed.

The deal follows the Hadoop spinner’s purchase of SequenceIQ in April this year and XA Security in the Big Data security field in 2014.

Hortonworks said it will take on Onyara’s Apache-based NiFi software as Hortonworks' DataFlow powered by Apache NiFi, for use with its HDP data platform.

NiFi delivers simplified and secure dataflow for real-time data slurped from sensors, social feeds, click streams, server lots and geo-location devices.

The idea is to make HDP simpler for end users to work with when assimilating, crunching and analysing large volumes of fast-moving IoT data.

Onyara’s founders contributed to the US government project that became NiFi, which was released through the NSA Technology Transfer Programme last Autumn. NiFi was submitted to Apache Software Foundation in November 2014 and became a top-level project in July as Apache NiFi.

Onyara has seven employees, and its co-founder and chief technology officer is Joesph Witt, a former US government software developer. ®