SGI Hadoop Clusters will run fully supported versions of Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop (CDH), atop of SGI's line of Rackable servers. SGI, which joined Cloudera Connect Partner Program, will offer a single telephone support line that can answer customer questions about either the SGI hardware or the Hadoop software.

The distribution would be best suited for organizations "that want a more enterprise Hadoop experience, instead of having to roll [them] on their own," said Bill Mannel, vice president of product marketing at SGI.

SGI will market the clusters to its traditional market of government agencies and financial institutions, focusing on those without the in-house talent to build such clusters by hand. Many of the , including giant Internet companies like Yahoo and U.S. intelligence agencies, have had the expertise to build their own Hadoop deployments in house. Most organizations, however, do not have this capability, but nevertheless would like to explore vast realms of their data using Hadoop, Mannel pointed out.

Such organizations "have smaller budgets and are looking for a more robust software stack and support services," Mannel said.

With its focus on serving the scientific high performance computing market, SGI is uniquely well suited for delivering large clusters to cost-sensitive customers, asserted Ed Albanese, Cloudera head of business development.