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Hortonworks nears a Hadoop IPO: Open source software company files to raise $100 million

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Hortonworks, which develops and supports open source distribution of Apache Hadoop for enterprises, filed on Monday with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering.

Hadoop is used for distributed storage and processing of data using clusters of commodity servers. Apache's open source Hadoop software framework was developed in the 2000s with major investments from Yahoo! ( YHOO ). Hortonworks was formed in 2011 when Yahoo! spun off its Hadoop engineering team with backing from Benchmark Capital.The company notes that Microsoft ( MSFT ) is its largest customer, representing over 20% of year-to-date revenue.

The Palo Alto, CA-based company, which was founded in 2011 and booked $52 million in support and services revenue for the 12 months ended September 30, 2012, plans to list on the NASDAQ under the symbol HDP. Hortonworks initially filed confidentially on June 27, 2014. Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets are the joint bookrunners on the deal. No pricing terms were disclosed.

Investment Disclosure: The information and opinions expressed herein were prepared by Renaissance Capital's research analysts and do not constitute an offer to buy or sell any security. Renaissance Capital, the Renaissance IPO ETF (symbol: IPO) or the Global IPO Fund (symbol: IPOSX) , may have investments in securities of companies mentioned.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.

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Hortonworks nears a Hadoop IPO: Open source software company files to raise $100 million

China’s quantum leap in cyber security war

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The new fibre optic cable will initially be used mostly for money transfers by ICBC. Photo: Bloomberg

China will soon have the world's most secure major computer network, making communications between Beijing and Shanghai impenetrable to hackers and giving it a decisive edge in its quiet cyberwar with the United States.

In two years' time, a fibre-optic cable between the two cities will transmit quantum encryption keys that can completely secure government, financial and military information from eavesdroppers.

"We learnt after the Edward Snowden affair that we are always being hacked," said Professor Pan Jianwei, a quantum physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, who is leading the project. "Since most of the products we buy come from foreign companies, we wanted to accelerate our own programme," he added. "This is very urgent because classical encryption was not invented in China, so we want to develop our own technology."

The $110 million cable, which is being funded by the central government and has been supported by the Central Military Commission, will initially mostly be used for money transfers by ICBC, the world's largest bank.

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However, Professor Pan said eventually all communications in China, down to storing photographs on cloud servers, could feature quantum encryption.

"Ten years ago it was not so easy to get sufficient funding to support theoretical research, but since 2006 and 2007 when the economy really went well, they have been putting more money into research and then it really sped up," he said.

Half an hour's drive away from Professor Pan's office, at Quantum Communications Technology, a company spun out of the university to commercialise the technology, the importance of the project is clear.

On the walls are framed photographs of visits from almost all of China's top leaders, including president Xi Jinping.

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China's quantum leap in cyber security war


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