Qrious to become Cloudera MSP for New Zealand

Qrious - the big data and analytics software business set up in 2014 by Spark NZ - has become the first managed service provider in New Zealand for global data management and analytics software company, Cloudera, which offers software built on the open source Hadoop, and which went public on the New York Stock Exchange last week.

Qrious says it will soon launch a new big data platform that will expand its data analytics offerings and the Cloudera partnership completes a full end-to-end data offering that it believes to be unique in New Zealand.

Qrious CEO, David Leach, said Qrious would localise the Cloudera platform for the needs of the New Zealand market, and then applying “Qrious’ world class data analytics, data science and machine learning capability, along with the added value of unique and complementary data sources.”

He claimed the combination would enable Qrious to “provide a genuine end-to-end data management and analytics solution for government and enterprise clients across New Zealand.”

Qrious said its data platform product, would be hosted by Spark’s cloud service provider, Revera, and that details would be revealed later. Leach said this would happen “within months” and the company was already talking to early adopters.

Cloudera’s regional director for Australia and New Zealand, Shyam Srinivasan, said Qrious was an ideal partner for Cloudera. “We believe Qrious is in a unique position in the New Zealand market. Its data scientists, architects and engineers are world class and, coupled with the value of its unique data sources, customers are able to see success much quicker than previously.”

Qrious was set up by what was then Telecom Digital Ventures in March 2014 with CEO Simon Moutter saying it would “help New Zealand address big challenging issues such as how to deliver better public transport, housing, and health outcomes [and] help businesses and organisations improve the way their products and services meet their customer wants and needs.”

He said Qrious would offer “a platform where businesses, the public sector and other organisations can privately and securely host their own data and combine this with other publicly available information to gain even greater insights.”

Telecom also announced that Qrious would establish a Data Science Academy “where students will be trained, tutored and tested on their knowledge of these new techniques,” and where “the best people will be offered internships and positions in this emerging and exciting industry.” However that institution does not appear to exist.

Cloudera shares rally after low valuation IPO

Cloudera shares listed on the NSX on 28 April giving the company a valuation of $US1.8b, well down on the $US4.1b private equity financing valuation three years ago. However they rallied 21 percent on their first day of trading.