The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has officially released Apache Hadoop 1.0, a major milestone in security and reliability for the open source, community-developed cloud computing and Big Data platform.

For those who haven’t been keeping close watch on the project, here’s how Apache describes Hadoop in its press release:

The six-year-old Hadoop project is based on technologies from Google, Yahoo and other web giants originally released in the mid-2000s. These days, Hadoop is deployed at companies including Amazon Web Services, AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, foursquare, HP, LinkedIn, Netflix, The New York Times, Rackspace, Twitter and Yahoo. According to Apache, Yahoo is the largest Hadoop user, with more than 42,000 nodes managed.

In fact, Microsoft and IBM both have integrated Hadoop into their respective cloud offerings. And just looking back at 2011, there’s been plenty of Hadoop chatter amongst service providers and ISVs of all sizes.

It seems that feature-wise, Hadoop 1.0 doesn’t bring much new to the table. But it’s an important step in the maturity of a quickly emerging standard in cloud computing, and TalkinCloud will continue to watch closely — especially since I have a hunch we’re going to start seeing an upswing in adoption with this milestone.