New Delhi, Oct 5 (IANS): Software company Cloudera and data management platform and solutions firm Hortonworks have announced an all-stock merger of equals, creating a leading next-generation data platform.

Under the terms of the transaction agreement, Cloudera stockholders will own approximately 60 per cent of the equity of the combined company and Hortonworks stockholders will own approximately 40 per cent.

The companies have a combined fully-diluted equity value of $5.2 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2019.

"By bringing together Hortonworks' investments in end-to-end data management with Cloudera's investments in data warehousing and machine learning, we will deliver the industry's first enterprise data cloud from the Edge to AI," said Tom Reilly, Chief Executive Officer at Cloudera.

"This merger will allow customers, partners, employees and the open source community to benefit from the enhanced offerings, larger scale and improved cost competitiveness inherent in this combination," added Rob Bearden, Chief Executive Officer of Hortonworks.