IBM and Cloudera have partnered to develop joint go-to-market programs to bring advanced data and AI offerings to more Apache Hadoop organizations.

The agreement builds on the relationship between IBM and Hortonworks, which merged with Cloudera in January, to build integrated solutions for data science and management. The new agreement extends them to include the Cloudera platform.

As part of the partnership, IBM will resell Cloudera’s Enterprise Data Hub and DataFlow, while Cloudera will resell IBM’s Watson Studio and BigSQL.

Paul Rivot, strategic alliance executive for IBM data and AI, tells us the pact will benefit IBM partners.

IBM’s Paul Rivot

“Our partner channel is important here, and as we did with Hortonworks, we have opened up the channel to allow them to provide Cloudera products and support along with other IBM offerings,” he said. “This should broaden their offerings around big data and open source solutions.”

Rivot said IBM’s work with Cloudera and before that Hortonworks is a “great extension of our efforts to help clients leverage Hadoop in meaningful ways, to store and process big data.”

“Through the ecosystem, clients can use our tools, like Watson Studio, to access data sets, share data and avoid the cost of building their own integration software processes — and ultimately build new business models more quickly,” he said.

Cloudera has been in the news lately as CEO and board member Tom Reilly announced he is leaving the company. In addition, the company lowered its full 2020 revenue guidance, from $835-$855 million to $745-$765 million.

“By teaming more strategically with IBM we can accelerate data-driven decision making for our joint enterprise customers who want a hybrid and multicloud data management solution with common security and governance,” said Scott Andress, Cloudera‘s vice president of global channels and alliances. “We are pleased to have expanded our relationship with IBM, and I am very encouraged by the momentum that our companies have continued to generate together since the merger.”