Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Advanced Analytics, a new option for Oracle Database 11g that combines Oracle R Enterprise with Oracle Data Mining. According to Oracle, Oracle R Enterprise delivers enterprise class performance for users of the R statistical programming language, increasing the scale of data that can be analyzed by orders of magnitude using Oracle Database 11g.

Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Advanced Analytics, a new option for Oracle Database 11g that combines Oracle R Enterprise with Oracle Data Mining. According to Oracle, Oracle R Enterprise delivers enterprise class performance for users of the R statistical programming language, increasing the scale of data that can be analyzed by orders of magnitude using Oracle Database 11g.

Birst Inc., a provider of business analytics solutions, has announced support for Apache Hadoop, combining the scale of Hadoop data sets with Birst's agile multi-dimensional database. "Business analytics is changing as the volume of data from online web interactions skyrockets and customers increasingly want to browse, query or merge transactional data with interaction data," says Rick Spickelmier, Birst CTO. "Data in Hadoop is not well suited for business intelligence and to make it actionable takes a lot of work. Birst's automated multi-dimensional database allows organizations to quickly and easily take big data and make sense of it."

Today's organizations must capture, track, analyze and store more information than ever before - everything from mass quantities of transactional, online and mobile data, to growing amounts of "machine-generated data" such as call detail records, gaming data or sensor readings. And just as volumes are expanding into the tens of terabytes, and even the petabyte range and beyond, IT departments are facing increasing demands for real-time analytics. In this era of "big data," the challenges are as varied as the solutions available to address them. How can businesses store all their data? How can they mitigate the impact of data overload on application performance, speed and reliability? How can they manage and analyze large data sets both efficiently and cost effectively?

InterSystems Corporation, a provider of advanced database, integration and analytics technologies, announced it has become ISO 9001:2008 certified. ISO 9001:2008 is a quality management standard, and for InterSystems, the certification covers all processes related to the product and service creation associated with the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance database and InterSystems Ensemble integration and development platform that are performed or managed from InterSystems' Cambridge-based headquarters.

InterSystems HealthShare has been chosen to support health information exchange (HIE) throughout Denmark. The Danish NSI (Nationalt Sundheds-IT), an agency operating under the Ministry of Health, is beginning development of a new service to link healthcare information systems used within Danish regions on a national level. The new HealthShare-based initiative enables the sharing of patient information between healthcare providers and government agencies countrywide.

Just as the New York Giants rallied late in the fourth quarter on Sunday to defeat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in 4 years, IBM and the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab teamed up last week to determine fans' favorite quarterback leading up to Super Bowl XLVI: Tom Brady or Eli Manning. Researchers examined data from Twitter using new analytics technologies that can understand positive, negative and neutral sentiments, distinguish irony, and utilize "machine learning" to separate important tweets from trivial ones.

Splunk Inc. has released the latest version of its flagship software, Splunk Enterprise 4.3, which extracts and harnesses customers' machine data and translates it into real-time operational intelligence. One of the cornerstones of Splunk's design has been its ease of use, and the latest release continues that emphasis, according to the company. Splunk 4.3 supports non-IT and business users by making it, "a lot simpler to organize a dashboard or visualization according to how you want to see it yourself without having to code anything or speak to the IT person," Sanjay Mehta, senior director of product marketing at Splunk, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We don't require that you're a data scientist or advanced statistician to use Splunk."

NTT Data Corporation, a global provider of IT services including business consulting, technology, and outsourcing services, has selected the Sybase Aleri Streaming Processor (ESP) and Sybase RAP, Sybase's complex event processing (CEP) and analytics platform for real-time analysis of large data sets, to enhance NTT Data's bridge monitoring system. NTT Data is using the Sybase technology to help improve the ability to analyze large, complex data sets collected at rapid rates, particularly during high-traffic periods.

KXEN, a provider of predictive analytics for business users, has certified its flagship product, InfiniteInsight, for Sybase IQ v.15, the column-based analytics server. The combination of the two solutions allows businesses to gain speed and performance in building predictive models and social network analysis to support business decisions.

SAP AG has introduced the SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail analytic application powered by the SAP HANA platform. The application aims to offer prebuilt data models, key performance indicators (KPIs), role-specific dashboards and customized reports to provide retailers with a deeper understanding of all factors influencing the merchandising lifecycle. SAP BusinessObjects Sales Analysis for Retail is planned for global availability to customers in the second quarter of 2012.

Tableau Software, a provider of business intelligence software, has announced the general availability of Tableau 7.0. The release offers improvements in performance and scalability, adds new visualization types and improves the product's overall analytical power and ease-of-use. In addition, the new Tableau Data Server capabilities will make it easy to share large volumes of data, share data models in large groups, and provide enhanced management of data assets, says Chris Stolte, chief development officer, co-founder, and inventor of Tableau Software.

InterSystems Corporation, a provider of advanced database, integration and analytics technologies, announced it has become ISO 9001:2008 certified. ISO 9001:2008 is a quality management standard, and for InterSystems, the certification covers all processes related to the product and service creation associated with the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance database and InterSystems Ensemble integration and development platform that are performed or managed from InterSystems' Cambridge-based headquarters.

Star Analytics, Inc., a provider of application process automation and integration software, has released the latest version of its data bridging technology, Star Integration Server, which is intended to make it easy to extract and combine data from Oracle systems with other business intelligence (BI) applications and data warehouses.

Tableau Software, a provider of business intelligence software, has announced the general availability of Tableau 7.0. The release offers improvements in performance and scalability, adds new visualization types and improves the product's overall analytical power and ease-of-use. In addition, the new Tableau Data Server capabilities will make it easy to share large volumes of data, share data models in large groups, and provide enhanced management of data assets, says Chris Stolte, chief development officer, co-founder, and inventor of Tableau Software.

Jaspersoft, a BI software provider, has announced the development of what it describes as the first BI architected for platform-as-a-service, with the planned integration of Jaspersoft BI with Red Hat's OpenShift PaaS. "With Jaspersoft's suite of reporting and analysis capabilities now available on OpenShift, organizations can quickly realize the benefits of the cloud while gaining deep insights from the data that powers these applications," says Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Cloud Business Unit at Red Hat.

"Big data" and analytics have become the rage within the executive suite. The promise is immense - harness all the available information within the enterprise, regardless of data model or source, and mine it for insights that can't be seen any other way. In short, senior managers become more effective at business planning, spotting emerging trends and opportunities and anticipating crises because they have the means to see both the metaphorical trees and the forest at the same time. However, big data technologies don't come without a cost.

The latest version of expressor software's flagship data integration platform, expressor 3.5, features cloud integration with Melissa Data's Data Quality Tools and Salesforce.com to provide comprehensive BI reporting and CRM integration with on premises applications. The new Salesforce.com and Melissa Data capabilities ship with expressor 3.5 Desktop Edition and Standard Edition.

InterSystems Corporation, a provider of advanced database, integration and analytics technologies, announced it has become ISO 9001:2008 certified. ISO 9001:2008 is a quality management standard, and for InterSystems, the certification covers all processes related to the product and service creation associated with the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance database and InterSystems Ensemble integration and development platform that are performed or managed from InterSystems' Cambridge-based headquarters.

The first calendar year following SAP's acquisition of Sybase is coming to a close. David Jonker, director, product marketing - Data Management & Analytics, Sybase, discusses key product integrations, IT trends that loom large in Sybase's data management strategies, and the emergence of what Sybase describes as DW 2.0. 2011 has been "a foundational year," with effort focused on making Sybase technologies work with SAP and setting the stage for 2012, says Jonker. "We believe 2012 is going to be a big year for us on the database side."

In this, our last E-Edition of Database Trends and Applications for 2011, we're taking a look back at some of the most widely read articles of the past year. These articles cover a range of topics. Some provide an examination of just-emerging or quickly evolving technologies, others highlight best practices in a specific discipline, while others comment on trends observed by industry experts. Click on the "December 2011 E-Edition UPDATE" headline above to access the articles. If you missed one earlier in the year, here's your second chance. All DBTA E-Editions are archived by month on the DBTA website.

Birst Inc., a provider of business analytics, has announced the release of an in-memory database optimized exclusively for business analytics. The Birst in-memory analytics database builds on Birst's data warehouse automation technology which provides for data integration across numerous data sources, including SAP, SalesForce, operational and financial systems, into a multi-dimensional, star schema design.

IBM and DemandTec have entered into a definitive merger agreement for IBM to acquire DemandTec in an all cash transaction for approximately $440 million. DemandTec delivers cloud-based analytics software that enables businesses to examine different customer buying scenarios, both online and in-store, so they can spot trends and shopper insights to make better price, promotion, and assortment decisions that increase revenue and profitability.

LexisNexis, a pioneer of information technology, has selected big data specialist MarkLogic to power components of the new platform behind Lexis Advance, its legal research solution. LexisNexis, a pioneer of information technology, has selected big data specialist MarkLogic to power components of the new platform behind Lexis Advance, its legal research solution.

EMC Corporation has introduced the EMC Greenplum Unified Analytics Platform (UAP), a platform to support big data analytics, that combines the co-processing of structured and unstructured data with a productivity engine that enables collaboration among data scientists. The new EMC Greenplum UAP brings together the EMC Greenplum database for structured data, the enterprise Hadoop offering EMC Greenplum HD for the analysis and processing of unstructured data, and EMC Greenplum Chorus, its new productivity engine for data science teams. Greenplum UAP will be available in the first quarter of calendar 2012.

LogiXML, a provider of web-based business intelligence (BI) software, announced that it has received a $10 million investment led by Summit Partners, a growth equity firm that invests in rapidly growing companies. Also participating in the round is Grotech Ventures, an existing LogiXML investor. The funds will be used to accelerate LogiXML's growth and expand the company's share of the BI and analytics software market.

Attivio announced the launch of an advanced unified information access platform that condenses information from existing BI and big data technologies into a single environment accessible to business end users. Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) 3.0 is designed to support information access methods used across the enterprise and provide search queries and role-based dashboards for mainstream business users.

The release of OpenInsight 9.3, the next version of Revelation Software's flagship product, is now imminent, and includes many new features eagerly awaited by Revelation customers. On track to be generally available by the end of the year, Robert Catalano, director of sales at Revelation, says that data encryption is among the major new components in OpenInsight 9.3. "Data encryption will be a key component that will be built into the database. It is data encryption at rest and that means that you can specify tables and fields that are sitting in on your disk drive and that data will be encrypted."

InterSystems Corporation, has announced that Pronger Smith Medical Care rolled out InterSystems Ensemble as its core enterprise integration platform. The strategic decision to build application interfaces with in-house staff on the Ensemble platform has already generated tens of thousands dollars in cost savings over any other development approach, according to Craig Cypress, Network System Manager at Pronger Smith.