diff --git a/external/storm-kafka/src/jvm/org/apache/storm/kafka/trident/GlobalPartitionInformation.java b/external/storm-kafka/src/jvm/org/apache/storm/kafka/trident/GlobalPartitionInformation.java
index e420cb35b93..20f30a4948c 100644
--- a/external/storm-kafka/src/jvm/org/apache/storm/kafka/trident/GlobalPartitionInformation.java
+++ b/external/storm-kafka/src/jvm/org/apache/storm/kafka/trident/GlobalPartitionInformation.java
@@ -18,14 +18,25 @@
 package org.apache.storm.kafka.trident;
 
 import com.google.common.base.Objects;
+
+import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonProcessingException;
+import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
+
 import org.apache.storm.kafka.Broker;
 import org.apache.storm.kafka.Partition;
+import org.json.simple.JSONAware;
 
 import java.io.Serializable;
-import java.util.*;
+import java.util.Iterator;
+import java.util.LinkedList;
+import java.util.List;
+import java.util.Map;
+import java.util.TreeMap;
 
 
-public class GlobalPartitionInformation implements Iterable<Partition>, Serializable {
+public class GlobalPartitionInformation implements Iterable<Partition>, Serializable, JSONAware {
+    private static final ObjectMapper json = new ObjectMapper();
+
 
     private Map<Integer, Broker> partitionMap;
     public String topic;
@@ -113,4 +124,13 @@ public boolean equals(Object obj) {
         final GlobalPartitionInformation other = (GlobalPartitionInformation) obj;
         return Objects.equal(this.partitionMap, other.partitionMap);
     }
+
+    @Override
+    public String toJSONString() {
+        try {
+            return json.writeValueAsString(this);
+        } catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
+            throw new RuntimeException(e);
+        }
+    }
 }
diff --git a/storm-core/pom.xml b/storm-core/pom.xml
index b6424d70679..5ebfb37a7b9 100644
--- a/storm-core/pom.xml
+++ b/storm-core/pom.xml
@@ -333,6 +333,10 @@
             <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>
             <artifactId>jackson-dataformat-smile</artifactId>
         </dependency>
+        <dependency>
+            <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
+            <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
+        </dependency>
         <dependency>
             <groupId>org.apache.curator</groupId>
             <artifactId>curator-client</artifactId>