Melissa Data, a provider of contact data quality and direct marketing solutions, announced expanded access to its collection of data quality tools for all editions of SQL Server 2012, including Enterprise, Business Intelligence and Standard, via SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) as well as the SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition's Data Quality Services. Melissa Data solutions include tools to profile, cleanse, verify, and match contact data, including address, name, phone and email.

MapR Technologies, Inc., provider of the MapR Distribution for Hadoop, has formed a partnership with Hadapt, which offers a data analytics platform for natively integrating SQL with Apache Hadoop. The partnership enables customers to leverage MapR's Hadoop distribution in conjunction with Hadapt's Interactive Query capabilities to analyze all types of data, structured, semi-structured and unstructured, in a single, enterprise platform. Partnerships such as the one with Hadapt enable a broad community of users to have access to Hadoop data while also leveraging the existing skill sets of those users, Jack Norris, vice president of MapR, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Five years ago, Radio Frequency ID (RFID) seemed posed to revolutionize commerce. Way back in 2003, Wal-Mart announced that it would be requiring that RFID tags - so called "electronic barcodes" - be attached to virtually all merchandise. Many- myself included - became convinced that the Wal-Mart directive would be the tipping point leading to universal adoption of RFID tabs in consumer goods and elsewhere.

For years, data warehouses and extract, transform and load (ETL) have been the primary methods of accessing and archiving multiple data sources across enterprises. Now, an emerging approach - data virtualization - promises to advance the concept of the federated data warehouse to deliver more timely and easier-to-access enterprise data. These are some of the observations made at Composite Software's third Annual Data Virtualization Day, held in New York City. This year's gathering was the largest ever, with nearly 250 customers and practitioners in attendance, Composite reports.

Big data is here, offering both vast opportunities — as well as vexing challenges — for every organization it touches. For a number of years, it has been understood that to be of value, information needs to be readily available, as close to real time as possible, to users in any location. Now, with the onset of "big data," the task gets more daunting. "These are all increasing the demands on both transactional and analytics data systems," says Bernie Spang, director of database software and systems for IBM.

With information now being generated from all corners of the enterprise, executives, managers, and professionals can ask and get answers to questions they have never been able to consider. For companies that are able to offer business decision makers rapid and easy access to business intelligence (BI) or analytic data from which they can assemble their own interfaces and reports, this means competitive advantage. However, today's BI systems still present obstacles to realizing this vision, according to a new survey of 250 data managers and professionals, conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., for Tableau Software. The survey findings are outlined in a new report, titled, "Opening Up Business Intelligence to the Enterprise: 2012 Survey of Data Professionals On Self-Service BI and Analytics."

Entrinsik, Inc., has announced that its Informer self-service reporting and business intelligence software is now listed on SugarCRM'sSugarExchange and can integrate directly with SugarCRM implementations. Through the integration between Entrinsik and SugarCRM, users can log into Sugar and access real-time reporting, data analysis and interactive dashboards. "It allows users to integrate multiple sources of data without even leaving the Sugar instance and without having to set up a separate data store or data cube which they would typically have to do in order to access data from multiple data sources," Sharon Shelton, vice president of marketing at Entrinsik, tells DBTA.

Data integration software provider Informatica has announced Informatica Cloud 2013, the latest release of its cloud-based integration and data quality applications. Informatica Cloud Winter 2013 provides a revamped cloud integration interface that improves end user productivity. "We've added a lot of enhancements around search, making it easier for relevant information to be available to the end user. The simplicity and ease of use continues to be our number-one differentiator and a key reason why we built our cloud solution in the first place," Darren Cunningham, vice president of marketing at Informatica, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Predictive analytics vendor Alpine Data Labs has released Alpine 2.8, the latest version of the company's flagship product that leverages Hadoop and enables enterprises to derive business value from their big data. Alpine 2.8 users can executive analytics on combined data from Hadoop and relational databases from their web browser without any additional investments in hardware or infrastructure.

Business intelligence software provider Jaspersoft has released Jaspersoft 5. The new release bolsters the analytic capabilities of Jaspersoft's reporting and analytics platform and introduces data exploration via intuitive, HTML5-based visualization.

RackSpace has launched a WordPress CMS installer within its Cloud Sites control panel, providing customers with a faster and easier way to install WordPress on newly created sites.The introduction of the WordPress CMS installer within the Cloud Sites control panel addresses an obvious need for Cloud Sites customers, Chris Spencer, a product manager at RackSpace, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Roughly 20% of the sites we host use WordPress today."

Attunity Ltd., a provider of information availability software solutions, has released Attunity Managed File Transfer (MFT) for Hadoop. The new enterprise data transfer solution is designed to accelerate big data collection processes and integrate them seamlessly into and out of Hadoop. MFT enables organizations to collect and transfer big data in both the cloud and enterprise data centers for strategic initiatives including log and machine-data analytics, business intelligence, and data archiving."Attunity MFT for Hadoop, the first of several Hadoop solutions that Attunity will unveil, is designed to deliver on the great promise of Hadoop by helping organizations achieve faster time-to-value for big data analytics projects," says Matt Benati, VP Global Marketing at Attunity.

Progress Software Corporation is offering a beta program of the DataDirect Cloud service. The new SaaS-based connection management service will enable simplified SQL access to a broad spectrum of cloud-based data sources through a single standards-based interface, without requiring customized interfaces or new libraries. "The success of cloud computing and SaaS based applications will depend in part on eliminating the 'data silo' these applications create for their customers," says Michael Benedict, vice president and business line manager, Progress DataDirect. Delivery of the DataDirect Cloud connectivity management service is expected in the second quarter of 2013, with beta program access available for a limited number of participants beginning in January 2013.

JackBe, a provider of business Intelligence software, launched Presto 3.5, the latest release of its flagship real-time operational intelligence platform. "The theme around the new release is DIY BI and basically what that means is that we are bringing metrics-driven real-time operational intelligence to front-line decision makers, and we are giving business users more self-service access to real-time KPIs and analytics so they can better assess the business impact of changing conditions as they happen," Elizabeth Edwards, CMO of JackBe, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Cloudera, provider of Apache Hadoop-based software and services, announced the first big data management solution that allows batch and real-time operations on any type of data within one scalable system. Cloudera Enterprise Real-Time Query (RTQ), powered by Cloudera Impala, improves the economics and performance of large scale enterprise data management, allowing organizations to process data at petabyte scale and interact with that data in real time all on the same system.

Informatica Corporation has introduced Informatica PowerCenter Big Data Edition, a solution for organizations supplementing transactional data with social, mobile, cloud and machine data at high velocity, volume and variety. PowerCenter Big Data Edition works with emerging technologies like Hadoop as well as traditional data management infrastructure to leverage organizations' big data while reducing costs and risks.

Open source software vendor Talend announced that it has added big data profiling for Apache Hadoop and support for NoSQL databases in the upcoming release of its integration platform, Talend v5.2. Data profiling, the process of evaluating the character and condition of data stored across the enterprise, is a critical step toward gaining control over organizational data, and is emerging as a big data best practice. "Profiling allows you to understand what you have in your Hadoop cluster and how this data can be used for your big data integration and management project," Yves de Montcheuil, Talend's vice president of marketing, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Big data is here, offering both vast opportunities — as well as vexing challenges — for every organization it touches. For a number of years, it has been understood that to be of value, information needs to be readily available, as close to real time as possible, to users in any location. Now, with the onset of "big data," the task gets more daunting. "These are all increasing the demands on both transactional and analytics data systems," says Bernie Spang, director of database software and systems for IBM.

Cirro, a company that enables simplified big data access, exploration, and analysis across heterogeneous data sources, has formed a technology partnership with Hortonworks, a commercial vendor for Apache Hadoop and related projects. The strategic partnership will focus on collaborative engineering and go-to-market activities that promote Hortonworks Data Platform for enterprise class Hadoop data processing and Cirro's solutions for on-the-fly access and integration of Hadoop with other enterprise data sources.

BI Software provider MicroStrategy rolled out MicroStrategy Cloud Express, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution designed for "do-it-yourself" business analytics, mobile intelligence and data publishing. According to the company, the new solution enables any business person - regardless of technical skill - to access and analyze data on their own, as well as design and share mobile apps data-driven mobile apps without writing code.

With information now being generated from all corners of the enterprise, executives, managers, and professionals can ask and get answers to questions they have never been able to consider. For companies that are able to offer business decision makers rapid and easy access to business intelligence (BI) or analytic data from which they can assemble their own interfaces and reports, this means competitive advantage. However, today's BI systems still present obstacles to realizing this vision, according to a new survey of 250 data managers and professionals, conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., for Tableau Software. The survey findings are outlined in a new report, titled, "Opening Up Business Intelligence to the Enterprise: 2012 Survey of Data Professionals On Self-Service BI and Analytics."

Mark Clark, president of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), spoke with 5 Minute Briefing at the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference about issues facing Oracle Applications users and the OAUG's plans for the year ahead. Helping members understand the significance of the cloud, Fusion applications, and EBS 12.2 are key issues, as the OAUG continues to provide education, networking opportunities, and a voice for members to Oracle, says Clark, who is also a senior partner at O2Works.

HiT Software, a provider of data replication and change data capture (CDC) solutions for heterogeneous database environments, has announced the release of DBMoto 7.2, which includes support for the Actian Vectorwise analytical database. "Vectorwise is a leading analytical database that is designed to deliver an incredible speed in returning queries on big data," Carolyn Hughes, director of marketing at HiT Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. In turn, she notes, users also want to be able to get data into Vectorwise at the same level of speed so that their reporting and analytics can be as close to real time as possible. DBMoto captures data from all major relational databases including Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2 (all versions), MySQL, Informix, Sybase and others, and automatically passes data and any updates to Vectorwise.

Attunity Ltd., a provider of information availability software solutions, is partnering with Teradata to offer Attunity Replicate for Teradata, a big data replication solution designed to enable loading of heterogeneous data to Teradata with high performance, efficiency and ease-of-use.

Kognitio is allowing companies to download a fully functional copy of its software at no charge, and with no time restrictions. The company, which made the announcement at O'Reilly Strata and Hadoop World conference, said it is offering a full-featured, perpetual use license of up to 128 gigabytes without an expiration period or other limited functions normally found in "trialware." This capability gives companies the ability to do in-memory analytics on, for example, more than 500 million customer records at once.

SAP announced the availability of the SAP ERP Customer Order Entry mobile app on SAP Store. The mobile app, which is built on is built on the technology of Sybase Unwired Platform, connects an iPhone into the sales and distribution systems of wholesale distributors and consumer product providers, enabling their customers to have mobile access to supply orders in real time. The announcement was made at the SAP Retail Forum North America, held in Dallas earlier this month.

At SAP TechEd 2012 in Las Vegas, SAP unveiled its plans for SAP HANA Cloud, a next-generation cloud platform based on in-memory technology. As part of SAP HANA Cloud, the company also announced the general availability of SAP NetWeaverCloud, an open standards-based application service, and SAP HANA One, a deployment of SAP HANA certified for production use on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, as the first offerings based on SAP HANA Cloud.

The recent explosion of mobile applications has dramatically altered the consumer landscape, making it the norm for users and customers alike to expect access and support anytime, anywhere. With Cisco recently reporting that mobile-connected devices are set to exceed the world's population this year, it's no surprise that the surge is overflowing into the enterprise. While there are a few leading innovators in enterprise mobility, the vast majority of businesses are still struggling to take the first steps towards a streamlined strategy. The question is no longer "Do we?" but "How do we?"

Melissa Data, a provider of contact data quality and direct marketing solutions, has announced Personator, an integrated data quality web service designed to provide identity verification and fraud prevention for e-commerce applications. Personator offers the ability to determine whether associations between different elements, such as name and address, are correct, thereby increasing accuracy by ensuring a valid and correct link between the data and identity of individual customer contacts.