The latest release of Apache Hadoop code includes a new workload management tool that backers of the project say will make it easier for developers to build applications for the big data platform. Hadoop has proven itself as a powerful way for some of the leading technology companies in the world like Yahoo and Google to manage large amounts of data. Hadoop systems have thus far relied on MapReduce to process data, but included in the latest iteration of the open source code is Yarn, which is a platform to run other applications within Hadoop alongside MapReduce. Yarn monitors the resources applications need and then provisions the capacity within the distributed computing system. Hadoop enthusiasts say this is an important feature to let more applications run within the big data open system and could lead to a wave of new analytics apps for Hadoop.