EMC is building Hadoop into Isilon, its network attached storage. The new offering will package EMC Greenplum with Isilon to create a solution that allows for a storage infrastructure that comes with Hadoop.

EMC is betting that customers want Hadoop built into their existing storage. In their view, customers do not have the confidence in open-source storage offerings.  EMC sees an opportunity in leveraging its deep storage expertise and extending it with analytics.

Other factors:

• Hadoop has a single point of failure in its existing form.  EMC will offer a distributed namenode.
• Hadoop deployments do not offer end-to-end data protection. EMC will offer full data protection including snapshots and backup.
• Consulting is a major part of the offering. EMC will do the architectural design and implementation. It will offer IT consulting.

Hadoop has had huge amounts of attention in the past year. But primarily as an open-source initiative. It’s complicated to implement and use. It is designed primarily for engineering focused companies. Web companies have been some of the biggest users.

EMC is making a play for those companies that do not have the engineering expertise or a foundation built on open-source technology.  That means selling big storage appliances.

The challenge for EMC: there are so many flavor of Hadoop that companies can try. IBM Netezza, Oracle’s new play with Cloudera and Dell’s Hadoop configuration with Cloudera as well.  Customers can use Amazon Web Services Elastic Map Reduce on a usage basis or HPCC, the Lexus-Nexis alternative.

Hadoop is going corporate.  And as that happens, expect more distributed storage providers to offer similar packages to what EMC is offering today.