Building big data platforms on-premises looks like a fool’s errand as expanding data spills out the windows and customers opt for knob-less service models. This became clear one year ago at HortonWorks’ DataWorks Summit in San Jose, California, for George Gilbert (@ggilbert41) (pictured, right), co-host of of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio.

“That was where we first got the sense that people were … throwing in the towel on trying to build large-scale big data platforms on-prem,” he told Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) (pictured, left), his co-host for coverage of the Data Platforms event in Litchfield Park, Arizona. (* Disclosure below.)

Even among cloud big data platforms, a divide is appearing between those that are mostly just software and those going all-in with software as a service, Gilbert stated, arguing that vendors who founded data platforms on traditional infrastructure for a standard software deployment model might be a step behind the times.

“Even if you were going to put it in a virtual machine, it’s still not a cloud. You’re still dealing with server abstractions,” he said.

In the cloud, virtual machines are replaced with services, which are quite different, Gilbert explained. They greatly simplify administration and development by automating tasks which formerly drained human hours and resources, he added.

Services as a service

Qubole Inc., sponsor of the event, entered the big data platform fray in 2013, boasting cloud-native DNA, services architecture and as a service delivery.

“Their contention, which we still have to do a little more homework on, is that the vendors who started with software on-prem can’t really make that change [to cloud and services] really easily without breaking what they’ve done on-prem, because they have traditional, perpetual-license physical software as opposed to services, which is what’s in the cloud,” Gilbert explained.

This gives Qubole a host of advantages in automation and agility, the company has said.

Customers need not have all data in the cloud to use Qubole’s cloud-native services, Frick noted. “You can pull the data out that you need, run it through a new age application and then feed it back into the old system,” he said.

Qubole could thus win business from platforms launched just a few years before it, Gilbert and Frick agreed.

“So far, the Clouderas and the MapRs and the Hortonworks‘ [big data platforms] of the world are more software than service when they’re in the cloud. They don’t hide all the knobs; you still need highly trained admins,” Gilbert said.

“Then they better be careful, because there might be a new as a service distro,” Frick concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Data Platforms 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Data Platforms 2017. Neither Qubole Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE