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HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill., Aug. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- MetaScale, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD) and best-in-class provider of managed services for Apache Hadoop, today announced a strategic partnership with Hortonworks, a leading commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop, that will allow enterprises across an array of industries to manage and analyze big data with far greater efficiency and effectiveness than ever before.

The partnership is aimed at fostering case-specific end-to-end solutions that leverage Apache Hadoop's ability to reduce the intricacies and performance bottlenecks associated with data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL). These solutions include reducing or even alleviating mainframe capacity constraints and costs, as well as reducing overall business intelligence and data warehousing costs. The end result is a foundation for big data analytics minus the time, capital and complexity required to build one's own system – all good news for enterprises associated with industries such as financial services, healthcare, media, transportation and manufacturing, to name just a few.

MetaScale specializes in implementing Apache Hadoop solutions for those enterprises that want to exploit big data without breaking the bank, while reducing ETL or mainframe costs and meeting processing windows. As a result of the new partnership, MetaScale is positioned to help customers deploy Apache Hadoop to experience immediate tactical success through the integration of their existing transactional or business intelligence landscape. Central to that customer experience is the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), a highly scalable, 100-percent open source production-grade platform that stores, processes and analyzes massive volumes of data. Powered by Apache Hadoop, HDP features MapReduce, HDFS, HCatalog, Pig, Hive, HBase, Ambari, and Zookeeper – some of Apache Hadoop's most popular and essential projects.

"We have witnessed time and again that traditional enterprises face numerous challenges when trying to move from an Apache Hadoop experiment to a production application with business value and payback. The partnership between MetaScale and Hortonworks addresses those challenges by bringing together HDP and MetaScale's ability to design, build, host, integrate, and operate production-grade solutions on customer premises or on a private cloud," said Krishna Nimmagadda, Head of Marketing and Business Development at MetaScale.

"We successfully completed multiple Apache Hadoop initiatives that enable our customers to reduce cost and complexities. The exciting part about this is the underlying big data framework that comes with those initiatives and which often lead to new business models and revenue enhancing opportunities," Nimmagadda added.

"At Hortonworks we are working to make Apache Hadoop easy to consume and use. The partnership with MetaScale offers organizations an easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy solution for developing and running Apache Hadoop-based applications in production," said Mitch Ferguson, Hortonworks VP of Business Development. "The combination of simplicity of deployment and expert skills that this creates will accelerate Apache Hadoop projects for organizations looking to exploit big data."

For more information about MetaScale and its support services, visit or connect with MetaScale at and .

About MetaScale
MetaScale provides best-in-class, technology-managed services and solutions to enterprises that are looking to unlock the potential in their data without the time, cost and complexity associated with traditional big data initiatives. MetaScale delivers an end-to-end solution so time is better spent in analyzing or massive-scale batch processing of data in a cloud model. MetaScale provides a full spectrum of services in a private cloud that leverages Hadoop, and helps businesses perform complex analytics and batch-production schedules not possible prior to Hadoop.  Part of the Sears Holdings family of companies (Sears Holdings Corporation-NASDAQ SHLD), MetaScale offers a mix of speed, scale, skills, and end-to-end solutions unavailable anywhere else in the big data space.

About Hortonworks
Hortonworks is a leading commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop, the preeminent open source platform for storing, managing, and analyzing large volumes of data. The Hortonworks Data Platform provides an open and stable foundation for enterprises and a growing ecosystem to build and deploy big data solutions. Together with the Apache community, Hortonworks is making Hadoop more robust and easier to install, manage, and use. Hortonworks provides unmatched technical support, training and certification programs for enterprises, systems integrators, and technology vendors. For more information, visit

About Sears Holdings Corporation
Sears Holdings Corporation is a leading integrated retailer with over 3,900 full-line and specialty retail stores in the United States and Canada and the home of ShopYourWay, a social shopping experience where members have the ability to earn points and receive benefits across a wide variety of physical and digital formats through .  Sears Holdings is the leading home appliance retailer as well as a leader in tools, lawn and garden, fitness equipment and automotive repair and maintenance.  Key proprietary brands include Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard, with a broad apparel offering, including such well-known labels as Lands' End, the Kardashian Kollection, Jaclyn Smith and Joe Boxer, as well as Sofia by Sofia Vergara and The Country Living Home Collection.   We are the nation's largest provider of home services, with more than 15 million service and installation calls made annually and have a long-established commitment to those who serve in the military through initiatives like the program. We have been named the 2011 Mobile Retailer of the Year, Recipient of the 2012 ENERGY STAR® "Corporate Commitment Award" for Product Retailing and Energy Management and one of the Top 20 Best Places to Work for Recent Grads.  Sears Holdings Corporation operates through its subsidiaries, including , Roebuck and Co. and Corporation.  For more information, visit Sears Holdings' website at . Twitter: ||Facebook:

Tom Aiello
Sears Holdings
taiell1@searshc.com
847-286-7387

Grant Deady
Zeno Group
312-396-9734
Grant.deady@zenogroup.com

SOURCE Sears Holdings Corporation