Hortonworks, one of the leading Apache Hadoop distribution vendors, has updated its product with the latest enhancements to come out of the open source community.

In the newest release of HDP 2.1, now available as a technical preview, Hortonworks has incorporated Apache Hive 0.13, which is the latest version of the open source data warehouse software for running SQL queries on Hadoop clusters. The new version processes SQL queries 100 times faster and is able to run them at petabyte scale.

HDP 2.1 also has new data governance and security features from Apache projects Falcon and Knox. Falcon is a critical data processing framework for Hadoop, and Knox extends perimeter security for Hadoop.

Hortonworks has added two new processing engines in release 2.1. Apache Storm does real-time vent processing for sensor and business activity monitoring data. Apache Solr adds a user interface for advanced search applications and high-performance indexing.

Enhanced management and operations capabilities include the latest version of Apache Ambari, a provisioning, management and monitoring tool for Hadoop clusters, and support by a wider group of partners, which includes Microsoft, Red Hat and Teradata.

Eron Kelly, general manager of SQL Server product marketing at Microsoft, said, “Together with Hortonworks, we’re contributing to Hadoop by making it faster, secure and more accessible to the enterprise. The availability of HDP 2.1 for Windows will enable enterprises to quickly and easily analyze and manage their Hadoop data to gain valuable business insights.”

Hortonworks' announcement comes on the same day as one of its competitors, Pivotal, announced it would provide a multitude of different database technologies as a service. The package would include an unlimited license for Pivotal's own distribution of Hadoop if a customer signs a minimum contract.