MapR is seeking funding and exploring business options to help the big data and Hadoop software company avoid closing its Santa Clara offices.
On the upside, MapR said it won more than 50 new logos in calendar year 2018. But the company has also eliminated "many direct sales and marketing positions this year" to become more efficient, according to a statement from the company.
The company also added:
"MapR is actively pursuing a strategic transaction that might allow it to complete this transition and avoid closing its Santa Clara site. In fact, MapR received more than one letter of intent from interested parties, and today is engaging in the due diligence process in a transaction which, if consummated, may eliminate the need to close the Santa Clara site."
The updates come a few months after MapR rivals Cloudera and Hortonworks merged in a deal that also raised questions about the market's overall outlook.
All three companies were early leaders in the Hadoop distribution market -- which was hugely hyped as a new way to gather, manage and monetize data from all types of information sources.
Hadoop still remains a relevant, growing market. Indeed, the global Hadoop industry will reach $87.14 billion by the end of 2022, representing a 50 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), according to Zion Market Research.
Still, ChannelE2E considers the figures overly optimistic and potentially misleading. Many Hadoop market forecasts involve the associated operating systems, databases, applications, underlying hardware and consulting services -- rather than just the core software.
Late to the Cloud Services Market?
In many ways, the Hadoop market also suffered from an initial on-premises focus. Building Hadoop-related applications and standing up associated on-premises hardware is generally expensive, and requires highly compensated big data system experts. In stark contrast, the rise of on-demand big data systems widely available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform further pressured the commercial Hadoop industry, ChannelE2E believes.
In recent years, MapR, Cloudera and HortonWorks all branched out beyond Hadoop to support all types of big data systems and data feeds. Cloud and hosted versions of their offerings also surfaced. Cloudera now positions itself as "the enterprise data cloud company." MapR positions itself as the "leading data platform for AI and analytics" -- supporting all data from every cloud on one platform.
Next Up: Cloudera Quarterly Financial Results
The market's next reality check is expected on June 5, when Cloudera is scheduled to announce first quarter of fiscal year 2020 results. The results, for the first time, will represent the combined financial performance of Cloudera and the former Hortonworks.
Cloudera's stock hit a record low earlier this month amid concerns about the company's latest Cloudera Data Platform. Cloudera's quarterly revenues for its Q4 of fiscal 2019 were $144.5 million (ahead of the Hortonworks deal), and top-line revenues were growing year-over-year at about 37 percent.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mentioned specific layoffs at the company, based on a report out of California. The version of the story was erroneous and has since been corrected. ChannelE2E apologizes for the error.
