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back to article Hortonworks faces sueball over Cloudera merger

Hortonworks is facing a sueball over its uneven merger with competitor Cloudera, as a proposed class action takes aim at the company's claims to shareholders. The companies revealed their intention to merge back in October, a move that valued the combined company – to be named Cloudera – at $5.2bn. The deal, which will see …

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  1. Gordon 10

    Violates SEC rules

    Then presumably the plaintiff could have notified the SEC rather than launching a sueball?

    Personally I think he should be thanking Cloudera, it's been clear for years that Horton were playing Yahoo to Cloudera's Google, and that they were on a trajectory that was going to disappear somehow....

    1 1 Reply
    1. cs9
      Reply Icon

      Re: Violates SEC rules

      I'd say Horton is AOL to Cloudera's Google. Take the money and run, Alex.

      1 0 Reply
    2. Ian Michael Gumby
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Re: Violates SEC rules

      I don't think that's a fair assessment.

      I've chatted w the senior execs at Horton, Cloudera and MapR.

      Horton had an interesting 'go to market' strategy and tried to compete on price and selling services. There's a couple of flaw's in Rob's plan. At first they gained market share by undercutting Cloudera. But there were gaps in what was being offered and they got hammered.

      It was and is pretty easy to convert customers from HDP to Cloudera and Vice versa. Of the three big vendors, MapR, to this date, still has the fewest number of defections. What this suggests is that people who chose MapR, made a conscious decision based on the product's merit and not cheapest license cost.

      Even Cloudera isn't out of the woods. They got a huge lift by Intel a few years back, before the IPO. Still they too have issues in terms of profitability.

      There's a flaw in the Open Source model. In order to succeed, you need to have a buyer big enough and willing to pony up the cash.

      0 0 Reply
  2. Woza
    Joke

    So

    Horton heard a sue?

    4 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The terms are almost 16 per cent less than Hortonworks' 52-week high of $26.22, the lawsuit claimed, adding it appeared that the company was "well-positioned for financial growth" – and so, presumably, the shareholders should be getting more bang for their buck.

    The lawsuit will fall flat on its face.

    First,Horton was not "well-positioned for financial growth".

    Looking at their latest 10-Q, they were still burning money. They lost less money than a year earlier, but they were not financially stable and have yet to turn a profit.

    Free clue... they were engaged in a partnership with IBM. IBM resold HDP into their customer base since IBM lacked a suitable option for an on-prem solution. If IBM didn't want them... who would?

    Cloudera? Mike Olson sold 6 companies to Larry Ellison's Oracle. The joke was that he had Larry on speed dial if he wanted to sell Cloudera when he was CEO. So if not IBM, Oracle, who?

    Its a very short list and outside of the merger, maybe Michael Dell? But would he want to jeopardize relationships w Cloudera and MapR?

    There's more, but the bottom line, Horton was still sinking and the future was not bright.

    Posted Anon, because I know more than I can say.

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