Business Intelligence and Analytics Articles
Neural networks and deep learning are frequently recognized as the key to futuristic innovations like facial recognition, with consumers paying up for the novelty of using their visage to unlock their phones, and police squads partnering with AI startups to catch criminals. But the use cases for neural nets extend well beyond those flashy scenarios, and innovations in hardware are enhancing accessibility, signaling that it's time for more companies to find appropriate business cases for their industry.
Posted May 21, 2018
Microsoft has acquired Semantic Machines Inc., a Berkeley, California-based company with an approach for building conversational AI. It uses the power of machine learning to enable users to discover, access, and interact with information and services.
Posted May 21, 2018
Oracle has signed an agreement to acquire DataScience.com, whose platform centralizes data science tools, projects and infrastructure in a fully-governed workspace.
Posted May 17, 2018
Extending autonomous capabilities across its Cloud Platform, Oracle has announced the availability of Oracle Autonomous Analytics Cloud, Oracle Autonomous Integration Cloud, and Oracle Autonomous Visual Builder Cloud.
Posted May 16, 2018
Accenture has revealed its new "Technology Vision for Oracle" report, forecasting the five key technology trends that will drive Accenture and Oracle's collaboration in the enterprise over the next 3 years. Designed to highlight the strategic shifts companies must make to take advantage of the potential of the intelligent enterprise, the report looks at specific use cases and technologies that are actively reinventing businesses.
Posted May 16, 2018
Syncsort has announced new capabilities in MIMIX, a product line in its portfolio of high availability (HA) and disaster recovery software for IBM i. MIMIX addresses key IT challenges for assuring data and application availability. According to Syncsort, the new MIMIX release delivers faster replication to protect organizations' growing volumes of data and transactions, a streamlined GUI dashboard with visibility into key HA metrics for simplified management, and new features that help ensure applications can be switched to a recovery server at a moment's notice.
Posted May 15, 2018
Percona is extending its open source database support expertise to PostgreSQL, enabling organizations to work with a single vendor to meet their support needs for MySQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, or any hybrid combination of these database technologies. By adding PostgreSQL to its portfolio of services, Percona has made it faster and easier for organizations to get the PostgreSQL support they need.
Posted May 14, 2018
Violin Systems LLC, a provider of extreme-performance enterprise storage, has announced that information technology and services expert VDX has added the Violin Flash Storage Platform to its solutions portfolio. With the Violin Flash Storage Platform, the companies say, enterprises can transition from legacy storage solutions to enterprise-class, all-flash storage to achieve favorable CAPEX and OPEX scenarios.
Posted May 14, 2018
Talend, a provider of cloud and big data integration solutions, is unveiling a new platform called Talend Data Streams - a free, Amazon marketplace application for the ingestion of massive volumes and wide varieties of real-time data. Talend Data Streams provides self-service access to real-time data for engineers, data scientists, data analysts and other ad hoc integrators.
Posted May 14, 2018
In the past few years, IoT has been greatly overhyped; hence, many IoT vendors had to convince the market of their pedigrees by touting use cases and customer success stories. In reality, IoT was only getting traction in very few markets—manufacturing being one—with the rest trailing behind.
Posted May 11, 2018
Silicon Valley has achieved an almost mythical status in both modern American popular culture as well as the annals of world economic history. Located south of San Francisco, the name "Silicon Valley" was coined in the early 1970s due to the volume of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers in the area. Today, the valley is synonymous with technology innovation and venture capital: two mighty forces of change.
Posted May 11, 2018
Across industry and academia, the past several years have seen a proverbial explosion of new business analytics education programs.If you're new to the analytics labor market—or looking to advance your credentials—academia has likewise undergone a period of massive innovation as educators work diligently to keep pace with market demands and produce a new breed of business analytics education. The change has been nothing short of astonishing
Posted May 11, 2018
Although security is often related to privacy, they are not synonymous. Data security can be defined as the set of policies and techniques to ensure the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of data at all times. Data privacy refers to the fact that the parties accessing and using the data do so only in ways that comply with the agreed-upon purposes of data use in their roles. These purposes can be expressed as part of a company's policy, but are also subject to legislation. In this way, several aspects of security can be considered as necessary instruments to guarantee data privacy.
Posted May 11, 2018
Write this down: Converged transactional and analytical data platforms stand for digital business. None of us has been alive long enough to remember a time without the printing press, but such a time did once exist. The printing press revolutionized the world of books, journalism, scientific research, and countless other areas by automating a process that was once tedious and time consuming.
Posted May 11, 2018
If blockchain could only be described in one word, that word would be "trust." It is an ideal mechanism to establish trust among multiple parties, demonstrated by its seminal use case as an abstraction for currency. The currency paradigm is instructive because it demonstrates the core concepts that could be leveraged in other use cases.
Posted May 11, 2018
Redgate Software is further developing its SQL Search tool to integrate with Microsoft SQL Operations Studio. SQL Search is a popular tool Redgate developed and the version for SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio 2017 has been downloaded more than half a million times.
Posted May 10, 2018
NGINX will now support its NGINX Application Platform on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, allowing customer to better manage and scale their applications. Red Hat has emerged as a static provider of Linux, Linux containers, and Kubernetes as foundational technologies that provide applications with portability, enhanced security, and cloud-like efficiencies.
Posted May 09, 2018
Sentenai, an emerging data science technology company, has raised $2 million in seed funding to further its product and customer development initiatives. This marks one of the first investments for One Way Ventures, a new, Boston-based fund founded by Semyon Dukach and Eveline Buchatskiy. Additional new Sentenai investors include TechNexus Venture Collaborative, which will also serve as a development and commercialization partner through its enterprise network, as well as notable angels Rob May, Jennifer Lum and Julia Austin.
Posted May 08, 2018
Thales is broadening the reach of its multi-cloud Bring Your Own Encryption (BYOE) solutions to encompass the most cost-effective cloud storage tiers. "What we've done with our product and technology is really now go and make sure we're supporting these different cloud storage capabilities across the public cloud," said Peter Galvin, chief strategy and marketing office at Thales eSecurity.
Posted May 07, 2018
Push Technology, a real-time intelligent data streaming and messaging provider, is releasing Diffusion Intelligent Data Platform version 6.1, introducing data lifecycle management and ownership functions. The new functions further simplify and reduce development time for companies building mission-critical business applications.
Posted May 04, 2018
The impact of cognitive computing technologies—including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)—is increasingly being felt in data centers and database operations of all sizes, across all industries. Research shows that AI and related cognitive technologies are no longer just experiments conducted by computer or data scientists—they are part of a real-world technology wave that is already showing tangible business results.
Posted May 02, 2018
Recently, the revised Markets in Financial Instruments Directions (MiFID II) launched in the EU. The sweeping regulatory changes will impact transaction reporting on all financial instruments traded in Europe and affect all U.S. firms that do business with European counterparts or customers. Firms will face new requirements in tracking data—including emails, texts, and documents related to every transaction—and will need to be able to quickly reconstruct trades and search across data silos, presenting a significant challenge. Here, Ken Krupa, CTO at enterprise database company MarkLogic, discusses the impact to U.S. firms, and how new regulations underscore the importance of increasing transparency, consumer protection, and data integrity.
Posted April 30, 2018
Data preparation is one of the biggest challenges facing customers today, according to Tableau Software, which cites an often-quoted statistic that analysts spend 80% of their time cleaning and shaping data, and only 20% actually analyzing it. To help speed the time to insight, Tableau has released Tableau Prep, a brand new product designed to help users prepare their data so they can use it for analysis more quickly.
Posted April 30, 2018
An astounding array of new technologies and approaches have emerged on the database scene over the past few years that promise to turn the next 12 months into a time of unprecedented transformation for the database landscape. There are new developments, along with reinforcement of tried-and-true technologies, some of which may help make the jobs of data managers just a bit easier.
Posted April 25, 2018
SAP is introducing SAP S/4HANA Cloud for intelligent product design, a new solution for collaborative research and development. The solution, which is built on SAP Cloud Platform using SAP's latest digital twin technology, is one of the building blocks for a network of digital twins to enable new business models.
Posted April 25, 2018
Machine learning is the hottest trend right now in the big data space. Nearly half (48 percent) of the companies who say they have already benefited from machine learning cite increased profitability as the top benefit they have realized, according to a new study from SAP.
Posted April 25, 2018
SAP is offering special pricing to university students interested in obtaining SAP certification from the SAP Global Certification program. Students can be certified as developers of the SAP HANA business data platform, a valuable skill in today's job market, and earn other certifications from SAP for just €99.
Posted April 25, 2018
SAP is acquiring Callidus Software Inc., a market leader known for its lead to money applications, including sales performance management and configure-price-quote (CPQ). This strategic move will strengthen SAP's intelligent customer experience suite of solutions.
Posted April 25, 2018
IBM saw growth in just about all of its business sectors, including mainframe and midrange-class sales in the first quarter of 2018. Overall systems revenues—including systems hardware and operating systems software—were $1.5 billion, up 8%, driven by growth in IBM Z and Power, the company reported.
Posted April 23, 2018
Pivotal Software, Inc. announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 37,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock at a price to the public of $15 per share. Pivotal shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under the ticker symbol "PVTL."
Posted April 20, 2018
DBAs can recover a database, tune SQL, and may even know how to write some PL/SQL when push comes to shove. And, yes, those are all great skills to have. But in 2018, DBAs need more, writes Matt Malcheski in a new IOUG SELECT article. Malcheski goes over the "hot topics," including blockchain, AI, and Internet of Things, and notes that DBAs of the future will need to understand not only the technical aspects of these and the other technologies but also must be able understand and add value to the functional data requirements necessary for all-encompassing solutions. "This is characterized in a data point from Gartner: By 2021, 40% of IT staff will be 'versatilists' holding multiple roles, most of which will be business rather than technology related."
Posted April 18, 2018
DataStax is making enhancements to its DataStax Enterprise platform, making upgrades to deliver twice the responsiveness and the ability to handle twice the throughput on the same infrastructure. DataStax Enterprise (DSE) 6 allows customers to maintain hybrid cloud flexibility with all the benefits of a distributed cloud database on any public cloud or on-premises. DSE 6 includes all the advantages of Apache Cassandra and much more.
Posted April 18, 2018
As the volume and complexity around data grows, it has become more critical than ever for organizations to develop a deep knowledge of their business context and to understand and quantify the value of that data.
Posted April 18, 2018
Hortonworks, a provider of global data management solutions, is releasing Hortonworks Data Steward Studio (DSS), a new service that gives enterprises consistent security and governance. With DSS, businesses will be more able to identify and evaluate trust levels of their data, collaborate securely, and democratize data across the enterprise with confidence.
Posted April 17, 2018
NuoDB, the elastic SQL database company for hybrid cloud applications, is releasing NuoDB Insights, a graphical dashboard of database and system metrics to help users understand the overall health of their distributed database domain. Customers can use this information to make decisions about how to optimize and troubleshoot their NuoDB database, its processes, and its associated resources.
Posted April 17, 2018
DataStax, provider of a distributed cloud database built on Apache Cassandra, has introduced DataStax Enterprise 6 (DSE 6). DSE 6 allows customers to maintain hybrid cloud flexibility with the benefits of a distributed cloud database on any public cloud or on-premises. This new release also increases performance for both reads and writes, which is critical for high-volume data ingestion requirements. With double the performance of Apache Cassandra, DataStax says, DSE 6 delivers twice the responsiveness and the ability to handle twice the throughput on the same infrastructure.
Posted April 17, 2018
Velostrata, a provider of accelerated enterprise cloud migration and mobility solutions, is partnering with Google Cloud in response to increasing enterprise demand in mass migrating on-premises workloads into the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The GCP-Velostrata-integrated solution takes a holistic approach to TCO reduction by not only being offered free of charge, but also accelerating the speed of cloud migrations.
Posted April 16, 2018
The key to understanding AI's current and future impact is its transformation of business processes. A widespread misconception is that AI systems, including advanced robotics and digital bots, will gradually replace humans in one industry after another. Self-driving vehicles, for example, will one day replace taxi, delivery, and truck drivers. That may be true for certain jobs, but what we've found in our research is that, although AI can be deployed to automate certain functions, the technology's greater power is in complementing and augmenting human capabilities.
Posted April 13, 2018
Tufin, a provider of Network Security Policy Orchestration solutions, is introducing Tufin Orca, a cloud-based solution that enables users to extend Tufin's policy-based approach to secure containers and microservices. Tufin Orca is available through an early access program that is now open. The solution integrates with DevOps teams' CI/CD tools to scan for threats, secure containers, and comply with regulations.
Posted April 13, 2018
NGINX, Inc., will partner with IBM to support its solution, NGINX Plus, for the IBM Cloud Private platform. NGINX Plus, the enterprise version of the NGINX open source software already integrated into IBM Cloud Private, allows companies to deliver their applications with a commercially supported Ingress controller along with advanced functionality needed for scaling production Kubernetes environments.
Posted April 13, 2018
Priority Software Ltd., a provider of ERP solutions, is releasing Priority v18.2, enhancing system openness and mobile capabilities, introducing a new document generator, and boosting support for regulations compliance.
Posted April 12, 2018
Couchbase has announced the latest release of its product for mobile data management, Couchbase Mobile 2.0. Available today, the new release offers enterprise developers SQL queries, full-text search, synchronization, and end-to-end security among other features to easily mobilize business applications to create exceptional customer experiences and a more effective workforce.
Posted April 12, 2018
Women's issues have headlined the news media for the past several months. Many stories, ranging from the #MeToo movement to the "Brogrammer" email blast at Google, have shown that women in technology (WIT) face negative work conditions and social pressures. In light of that, it seemed appropriate to dive into the topic of WIT within the SQL Server community (aka, the Data Platform community) and gauge where we're at.
Posted April 12, 2018
Data lake is a newer IT term created for a new category of data store. But just what is a data lake? According to IBM, "a data lake is a storage repository that holds an enormous amount of raw or refined data in native format until it is accessed." That makes sense. I think the most important aspect of this definition is that data is stored in its "native format." The data is not manipulated or transformed in any meaningful way; it is simply stored and cataloged for future use.
Posted April 12, 2018