Silicon Valley data storage giant NetApp is expanding its involvement with the open-source framework for large-scale cluster computing Apache Hadoop.

Earlier this week, the company launched a full Hadoop-readyl hardware solution (compute, storage and network) and announced a partnership with Hortonworks – which has developed an open-source Hadoop distribution – to collaborate on Hadoop-based solutions and make contributions to the Apache Hadoop open-source community.

Rich Clifton, senior VP of NetApp’s Solutions and Integrations group, said both announcements were strategic moves for the company, seeking greater flexibility and interoperability.

“While other storage vendors use proprietary solutions that limit the use and interoperability of their big data or Hadoop solutions, we intend to give customers choices, whether they’re looking to work with the analytical tools they already have, deploy an entirely new Hadoop solution, or just experiment with Hadoop,” he said.

The new hardware package for Hadoop is called Open Solution for Hadoop Rack. A business can use it to move a Hadoop deployment from lab into production quickly.

NetApp did not specify which compute and network components were part of the package.

Together with Hortonworks, NetApp will build solutions based on its new partner’s Data Platform distribution for Hadoop. NetApp said the two partners intended to contribute the results of their joint development work back to the Apache Hadoop community.

They plan to focus their development efforts on cluster performance, storage utilization, service-level agreement attainment and data availability.

NetApp and Hortonworks expect to make actual products that result from their collaboration later this year. The Open Solution for Hadoop Rack is already available.