Karmasphere announced that its Apache Hadoop tools Karmasphere Analyst and Karmasphere Studio will be available via Amazon Web Services Elastic Map Reduce as a pay-as-you-go service. Users will still need to download the tools, but will be able to pay via AWS.

Karmasphere is one of several vendors trying to make Hadoop more accessible. Karmasphere is focused on data analysts by providing them with a graphical interface and SQL-like language for working with Hadoop. Combined with the Elastic Map Reduce service the company can offer one of the most simple and turnkey Hadoop offering on the market.

Services Angle

This is another interesting instance of offering software, not just resources, on a pay-as-you-go basis. Another example of this is MorphLabs making Zend Server available on an hourly basis. It’s a different model from the typical software-as-a-service, where you typically pay a flat monthly fee.

Earlier today I looked at some of the alternatives to Hadoop. One of the big issues with Hadoop is its complexity and the need to either hire professional Hadoop consultants or find and train staff capable of working with the Hadoop stack. For some uses, Karmasphere can radically reduce the complexity of working with Hadoop. And AWS takes care of the physical infrastructure. Solutions like this, built on top of open source Hadoop element, seem like the softwares’ current best path forward.