India, June 20 -- Has Hadoop gone the way of 8-track tapes and Betamax? The technology that engendered so much excitement and optimism about the potential of big data has, at the very least, hit a speed bump as the two remaining independent providers -- Cloudera and MapR -- are each facing their own crisis.

MapR's problems are existential. The company won a reprieve from imminent shut down last week, saying that it has signed a letter of intent with a potential buyer. That buyer is performing due diligence now and MapR now faces a July 3 deadline for shutting down if the deal with this buyer doesn't go through.

Cloudera suffered a couple of disappointing quarters and announced its CEO is stepping down -- news that was not well received ...