Key findings from a new study, "Big Data Opportunities," will be presented at Big Data Boot Camp at the Hilton New York. Big Data Boot Camp will kick off at 9 am on Tuesday, May 21, with a keynote from John O'Brien, founder and principal of Radiant Advisors, on the dynamics and current issues being faced in today's big data analytic implementations. Directly after the opening address, David Jonker, senior director of Big Data Marketing, SAP, will showcase the results of the new big data survey, which revealed a variety of practical approaches that organizations are adopting to manage and capitalize on big data. The study was conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., and sponsored by SAP.

It seems that juggling is the most useful of all skills when embarking on a data warehousing project. During the discovery and analysis phase, the workload grows insanely large, like some mutant science fiction monster. Pressures to deliver can encourage rampant corner-cutting to move quickly, while the need to provide value urges caution in order not to throw out the proverbial baby with the bath water as the project speeds along. Change data capture is one area that is a glaring example of the necessary juggling and balancing.

The conference agenda as well as the list of speakers is now available for DBTA's Big Data Boot Camp, a deep dive designed to bring together thought leaders and practitioners who will provide insight on how to collect, manage, and act on big data. The conference will be held May 21-22 at the Hilton New York. SAP is the diamond sponsor, and Objectivity and MarkLogic are platinum sponsors of the two-day event.

The conference agenda as well as the list of speakers is now available for DBTA's Big Data Boot Camp, a deep dive designed to bring together thought leaders and practitioners who will provide insight on how to collect, manage, and act on big data. The conference will be held May 21-22 at the Hilton New York. SAP is the diamond sponsor, and Objectivity and MarkLogic are platinum sponsors of the two-day event.

Data keeps growing, systems and servers keep sprawling, and users keep clamoring for more real-time access. The result of all this frenzy of activity is pressure for faster, more effective data integration that can deliver more expansive views of information, while still maintaining quality and integrity. Enterprise data and IT managers are responding in a variety of ways, looking to initiatives such as enterprise mashups, automation, virtualization, and cloud to pursue new paths to data integration. In the process, they are moving beyond the traditional means of integration they have relied on for years to pull data together.

Data keeps growing, systems and servers keep sprawling, and users keep clamoring for more real-time access. The result of all this frenzy of activity is pressure for faster, more effective data integration that can deliver more expansive views of information, while still maintaining quality and integrity. Enterprise data and IT managers are responding in a variety of ways, looking to initiatives such as enterprise mashups, automation, virtualization, and cloud to pursue new paths to data integration. In the process, they are moving beyond the traditional means of integration they have relied on for years to pull data together.

Data keeps growing, systems and servers keep sprawling, and users keep clamoring for more real-time access. The result of all this frenzy of activity is pressure for faster, more effective data integration that can deliver more expansive views of information, while still maintaining quality and integrity. Enterprise data and IT managers are responding in a variety of ways, looking to initiatives such as enterprise mashups, automation, virtualization, and cloud to pursue new paths to data integration. In the process, they are moving beyond the traditional means of integration they have relied on for years to pull data together.

Attunity Ltd., a provider of information availability software solutions, released Attunity Replicate 2.1, a high-performance data delivery solution that adds improvements for data warehousing. Attunity Replicate's new performance enhancements support many data warehouses, including Amazon Redshift, EMC Greenplum and Teradata.

SAP AG has introduced a new version of its Sybase IQ disk-based column store analytics server. The overriding theme of this new release, which will be generally available later in the first quarter, "is positioning IQ 16 to go from terabytes to petabytes," Dan Lahl, senior director of product marketing at SAP, tells 5 Minute Briefing. To accomplish this, IQ 16 provides enhancements in three critical areas.

Hortonworks, a leading contributor to Apache Hadoop, has released Hortonworks Sandbox, a learning environment and on-ramp for anyone interested in learning, evaluating or using Apache Hadoop in the enterprise. This tool seeks to bridge the gap between people who want to learn Hadoop, and the complexity of setting up a cluster with an integrated environment that provides demos, videos, tutorials.

SAP AG has introduced a new version of its Sybase IQ disk-based column store analytics server. The overriding theme of this new release, which will be generally available later in the first quarter, "is positioning IQ 16 to go from terabytes to petabytes," Dan Lahl, senior director of product marketing at SAP, tells 5 Minute Briefing. To accomplish this, IQ 16 provides enhancements in three critical areas.

MarkLogic said it plans to deliver an enterprise-grade application and analytics software solution based on the new Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop software. The Intel Distribution will be combined with the MarkLogic Enterprise NoSQL database to support real-time transactional and analytic applications.

Hortonworks has announced that the Hortonworks Data Platform is now available for Windows in addition to Linux, enabling organizations to run Hadoop-based solutions natively on Windows. According to Hortonworks, making the Hortonworks Data Platform available for Windows is a necessary step in its strategy to broaden the reach of Apache Hadoop across the enterprise.

SAP AG has introduced a new version of its Sybase IQ disk-based column store analytics server. The overriding theme of this new release, which will be generally available later in the first quarter, "is positioning IQ 16 to go from terabytes to petabytes," Dan Lahl, senior director of product marketing at SAP, tells 5 Minute Briefing. To accomplish this, IQ 16 provides enhancements in three critical areas.

Attunity is developing a solution for fast data loading into Amazon Redshift, AWS's new data warehouse in the cloud. The Attunity solution is expected to be available for customer preview in March 2013.

Hortonworks, a contributor to Apache Hadoop, has submitted two new incubation projects to the Apache Software Foundation and also announced the launch of the new "Stinger Initiative." These three projects seek to address key enterprise requirements regarding Hadoop application security and performance.

Hortonworks, a leading contributor to Apache Hadoop, has released Hortonworks Sandbox, a learning environment and on-ramp for anyone interested in learning, evaluating or using Apache Hadoop in the enterprise. This tool seeks to bridge the gap between people who want to learn Hadoop, and the complexity of setting up a cluster with an integrated environment that provides demos, videos, tutorials.

IBM reports a surge in mainframe sales in the most recent quarter, surpassing all previous quarters. This announcement was part of the company's release of quarterly and annual results. Overall, total quarterly revenue was down 1% from last year, and down 2% for the year.

Actian Corp. and Pervasive Software Inc. have entered into a definitive merger agreement through which Actian will acquire all of Pervasive's outstanding shares for $9.20 per share. Actian products include Action Apps, Vectorwise, the analytical database, Ingres, an independent mission-critical OLTP database, in addition to the Versant Object Database, which Actian added to its portfolio through another recent merger in which Actian acquired all the outstanding shares of Versant Corporation. According to the company, the deal values Pervasive at $161.9 million and will accelerate Actian's ability to deliver its vision of providing organizations with the capability to take action in real time as their business environment changes.

Today's data warehouse environments are not keeping up with the explosive growth of data volume (or "big data") and the demand for real-time analytics. Fewer than one out of 10 respondents to a new survey say their data warehouse sites can deliver analysis in what they would consider a real-time timeframe. Nearly 75% of respondents believe that in-memory technology is important to enabling their organization to remain competitive in the future. Yet, almost as many also indicate they lack the in-memory skills to deliver even current business requirements. These are among the findings of a new survey of 323 data managers and professionals who are part of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). The survey was underwritten by SAP Corporation and conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc.

Databases are hampered by a reliance on disk-based storage, a technology that has been in place for more than two decades. Even with the addition of memory caches and solid state drives, the model of relying on repeated access to the permanent information storage devices is still a bottleneck in capitalizing on today's "big data," according to a new survey of 323 data managers and professionals who are part of the IOUG. Nearly 75% of respondents believe that in-memory technology is important to enabling their organization to remain competitive in the future. Yet, almost as many also indicate they lack the in-memory skills to deliver even current business requirements. The research results are detailed in a new report, titled "Accelerating Enterprise Insights: 2013 IOUG In-Memory Strategies Survey."

The call for papers is now open for the first-ever Big Data Boot Camp produced by Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) magazine and www.dbta.com. The event, which will take place May 21-22 at the New York Hilton, will provide the opportunity for speakers to share their knowledge and experience in the emerging big data arena.

Databases are hampered by a reliance on disk-based storage, a technology that has been in place for more than two decades. Even with the addition of memory caches and solid state drives, the model of relying on repeated access to the permanent information storage devices is still a bottleneck in capitalizing on today's "big data," according to a new survey of 323 data managers and professionals who are part of the IOUG. Nearly 75% of respondents believe that in-memory technology is important to enabling their organization to remain competitive in the future. Yet, almost as many also indicate they lack the in-memory skills to deliver even current business requirements. The research results are detailed in a new report, titled "Accelerating Enterprise Insights: 2013 IOUG In-Memory Strategies Survey."

The call for papers is now open for the first-ever Big Data Boot Camp produced by Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) magazine and www.dbta.com. The event, which will take place May 21-22 at the New York Hilton, will provide the opportunity for speakers to share their knowledge and experience in the emerging big data arena.

MicroStrategy Inc., a business intelligence software vendor, has certified its integration with the Amazon Redshift data warehouse service, a cloud-based service designed to deliver high performance analytics for data warehouse and big data applications. "A big part of the value we perceive with Redshift is that it takes advantage of the cloud to really deliver a very impressive price-performance ratio that is compelling for a lot of different use cases," Kevin Spurway, MicroStrategy's vice president of cloud and strategic marketing, tells DBTA. MicroStrategy is one of the first vendors to certify integration with Amazon Redshift.

Despite the rise of big data, data warehousing is far from dead. While traditional, static data warehouses may have indeed seen their day, an agile data warehouse — one that can map to the needs of the business and change as the business changes — is quickly on the rise. Many of the conversations today around big data revolve around volume and while that is certainly valid, the issue is also about understanding data in context to make valuable business decisions. Do you really understand why a consumer takes action to buy? How do their purchases relate? When will they do it again? Big data is limited when it comes to answering these questions. An agile approach — one that gives even big data a life beyond its initial purpose — is the value data warehousing can bring to bear and is critical to long-term business success.

The University of Minnesota, a top research institution comprised of five campuses, 65,000 students and 25,000 employees, has made systematic changes and improved database administration efficiency with Oracle Exadata Database Machine. By hosting its IT environment on two Oracle Exadata Database Machine half racks, the university consolidated more than 200 Oracle database instances into fewer than 20, enabling it to reduce data center floor space and total cost of ownership.

At OpenWorld, Oracle's annual conference for customers and partners, John Matelski, president of the IOUG, and CIO for Dekalb County, Georgia, gave his perspective on the key takeaways from this year's event. Matelski also described the user group's efforts to help the community understand the value of Oracle's engineered systems and deal with the broad implications of big data, and how the IOUG is supporting Oracle DBAs in their evolving roles.

Tervela Turbo is now certified on CDH4 (Cloudera's Distribution Including Apache Hadoop Version 4). Introduced in October, Tervela Turbo, a high-performance data movement engine, helps Cloudera customers implement mission-critical Hadoop systems with reliable data capture, high-speed data loading into HDFS, disaster recovery for Hadoop, and ETLT data warehousing. Tervela has also joined the Cloudera Connect Partner Program.