Cloudera Data Science
Relational databases
Database software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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What is Cloudera Data Science
Cloudera Data Science is an enterprise data science and machine learning workbench that runs within the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP). It provides browser-based development environments (including notebooks and IDE sessions), job scheduling, and model deployment capabilities for teams building analytics and ML workloads close to governed data. It is typically used by data scientists, ML engineers, and platform teams that need centralized security, resource controls, and integration with a broader data platform rather than a standalone database.
Integrated with CDP governance
It operates inside the Cloudera Data Platform and aligns with platform-level security, authentication, and access controls. This supports enterprise requirements such as controlled data access, auditability, and separation of duties. For organizations standardizing on a single data platform, this reduces the need to stitch together separate tools for development and governed data access.
Multi-user development workspaces
It provides managed, browser-accessible workspaces for interactive development, including notebook-style workflows and IDE-like sessions. Teams can standardize environments and dependencies through centrally managed runtimes and images. This helps reduce local setup variance and supports repeatable development across users.
Operationalization features included
It includes capabilities for running scheduled jobs and deploying models/services within the platform context. This supports moving from experimentation to repeatable execution without exporting work to unrelated systems. Platform teams can apply resource policies and monitoring consistent with other CDP workloads.
Not a relational database
Despite being listed under database categories, the product’s core function is data science and ML development rather than storing and serving relational data. Organizations primarily seeking a managed relational database engine will still need a separate database service. Fit and evaluation should focus on ML workflow support and platform integration, not SQL database features.
Platform dependency on CDP
It is designed to work as part of Cloudera Data Platform, which can increase commitment to Cloudera’s ecosystem and operational model. Adopting it typically involves aligning with CDP’s deployment, security, and administration patterns. This can be less suitable for teams that want a lightweight, standalone tool or a fully managed service with minimal platform operations.
Enterprise setup and administration
Running and governing multi-user data science environments requires ongoing administration, including runtime management, resource allocation, and access configuration. Compared with simpler single-purpose tools, initial setup and operational overhead can be higher. Organizations without a dedicated data platform team may find the operational requirements challenging.
Plan & Pricing
Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go (hourly, per Cloudera Compute Unit - CCU) Free tier/trial: On-prem Cloudera Data Science Workbench (CDSW) — 60-day, fully functional, non-renewable trial; no evidence of a permanently free tier for Cloudera Data Science/Cloudera AI services on official site. Example costs (official site):
- AI / Machine Learning / AI Workbench: $0.20 per CCU / hour.
- AI Inference: $0.25 per CCU / hour.
- (Example from public cloud rate table) AWS m5.large = 1 CCU → $0.20 / hour for AI; m5.xlarge = 2 CCU → $0.40 / hour. On-premises: Contact sales / annual subscription for on-prem Cloudera Data Services (Cloudera AI / Workbench — contact sales for pricing). Discounts / purchasing options (official site notes): Monthly billing, prepaid credits, and volume/commitment discounts referenced for some services (and some function invocation pricing shows "with volume discounts"). Notes: Cloudera Data Science Workbench requires a Cloudera Enterprise license; after the 60-day trial a license key must be uploaded to continue full functionality.
Seller details
Cloudera, Inc.
Santa Clara, CA, USA
2008
Private
https://www.cloudera.com/
https://x.com/cloudera
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudera/
