Business Intelligence and Analytics Articles
It is an understatement to say we're witnessing an example of Moore's Law — which states the number of transistors on a chip will double approximately every two years — as we seek to manage the explosion of big data. Given the impact this new wealth of information has on hundreds of millions of business transactions, there's an urgent need to look beyond traditional insight-generation tools and techniques. It's critical we develop new tools and skills to extract the insights that organizations seek through predictive analytics.
Posted October 10, 2012
Composite Software introduced version 6.2 of the Composite Data Virtualization Platform at Data Virtualization Day 2012, its data virtualization conference in New York City. The new release contains additional analytics enablement capabilities including support for more analytic data sources, additional analytic platform optimizations, and expanded data governance. "High-performance access to big data, analytic appliances and data warehouses is far simpler and faster with Composite's data virtualization solution," says Kevin Ott, Composite Software senior VP of product development.
Posted October 10, 2012
CA Technologies launched a new book called "Service Virtualization: Reality Is Overrated" at Oracle OpenWorld. Co-authored by CA CTO John Michelsen and CA LISA director of product marketing Jason English, the book explains how deploying service virtualization to simulate the behavior, responsiveness and data of dependent systems can help remove constraints in the existing software environment, and help increase the speed, performance, and agility for the development of enterprise application software.
Posted October 10, 2012
Are today's data systems — many of which were built and designed for legacy systems of the past decade — up to the task of moving information to end users at the moment they need it? And is this information timely enough? In many cases, there's a lot of work that still needs to be done before real-time information, drawn from multiple sources, becomes a reality. A new survey of 338 data managers and professionals who are subscribers to Database Trends and Applications reveals that real-time data access is still a distant pipe dream for at least half of the companies represented in the survey. The survey, conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., in partnership with Attunity in March of 2012, finds that close to half of the survey respondents, 48%, report that relevant data within their organizations still take 24 hours or longer to reach decision makers. This suggests that much data is still batch-loaded overnight.
Posted October 09, 2012
Infrastructure software vendor TIBCO Software Inc., has announced the latest version of its data discovery and analytics platform, Spotfire 5.0. Featuring a redesigned in-memory engine, users across the enterprise will be able to visualize and interact with enormous amounts of data. Spotfire 5.0 is integrated with data warehouses such as Teradata, Oracle, and Microsoft, and accesses Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services cubes.
Posted October 02, 2012
Business analytics vendor OpTier has released OpTier APM 5.0, a solution that provides real-time business transaction analytics and deep diagnostics, enabling improved visibility and gains in productivity. OpTier also released a new Big Data Analytics solution that takes advantage of OpTier's business transaction-based platform, providing real-time big data analytics already in context and reducing time and cost.
Posted October 01, 2012
Quest Software has introduced Toad Business Intelligence Suite, a packaged suite of tools to link traditional and non-traditional data sources, bridging the gap between BI environments and distributed big data sources. In addition, Toad BI Suite aims to span the divide between technical and non-technical users by offering tailored interfaces designed to meet their individual data provisioning and analytic needs.
Posted September 26, 2012
SAP is offering new analytics software that bundles SAP BusinessObjects business intelligence (BI) solutions and the SAP Sybase IQ server, a high-performance data foundation designed specifically for analytics. The solutions help organizations of all sizes gain better insight into "big data" with advanced data visualization, self-service data discovery, mobile BI and predictive capabilities.
Posted September 26, 2012
The opportunities and challenges presented by big data are examined in a new survey of 298 data managers and professionals who are part of the Independent Oracle Users Group. The survey was underwritten by Oracle Corporation and conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc. According to this new survey, more than one out of 10 data managers now have in excess of a petabyte of data within their organizations, and a majority of respondents report their levels of unstructured data are growing. Fewer than one out of five respondents feel their IT infrastructure will be ready to handle this incoming surge of data. Protecting data overall is important, but unstructured data gets low priority at this time.
Posted September 26, 2012
If you have not heard the buzz around Oracle's Engineered Systems, then you must not be keeping up with Oracle's marketing promotions, reading any technical journals, or even just walking through any airports lately. While the marketing claims are impressive, the use of Marvel's characters was imaginative and Oracle's use of the slogan "Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together" is enticing, you may be asking yourself, "What does all of this mean to me?" Well, let's illustrate by example.
Posted September 26, 2012
MicroStrategy, a provider of business intelligence (BI) software, has introduced a new release of the company's core platform. MicroStrategy 9.3 includes new capabilities and improvements to MicroStrategy's data discovery software, Visual Insight; increased support for advanced analytics from 'R' - the open source language for predictive analysis; and improved connectivity to Hadoop. In addition, MicroStrategy 9.3 delivers a high speed "Google-like" search experience and introduces an innovative, new administration product, MicroStrategy System Manager, for automating manual, multi-step processes.
Posted September 25, 2012
Business analytics provider Birst Inc. has released a free cloud-based analytics edition of Birst available to business users, called Birst Express. Users can connect directly to Salesforce.com for sales analytics that span Salesforce.com and their own data sources, as well as visualize data and deliver analysis in a cloud-based environment. Users can then share their analyses and access their insights anywhere, on their desktop or mobile device.
Posted September 25, 2012
Infobright has introduced a database appliance purpose-built for the analysis of machine-generated data called Infopliance. Integrating Infobright's analytic database with dedicated server and storage hardware, the new appliance is intended to provide customers with a cost-effective, scalable solution for extracting insight from growing volumes of real-time and historical information generated by web logs, network logs, call detail records, security data, and sensor data. "We have seen a growing need among customers who are going from one terabytes to two terabytes, to 15 terabytes, to 30 terabytes. They are experiencing very explosive data growth, and we began to realize that there would be a market for delivering a purpose-built machine-generated data appliance," Don DeLoach, president and CEO of Infobright, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 24, 2012
The first computer program I ever wrote (in 1979, if you must know) was in the statistical package SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), and the second computer platform I used was SAS (Statistical Analysis System). Both of these systems are still around today—SPSS was acquired by IBM as part of its BI portfolio, and SAS is now the world's largest privately held software company. The longevity of these platforms—they have essentially outlived almost all contemporary software packages—speaks to the perennial importance of data analysis to computing.
Posted September 19, 2012
In recent years, the networks of developers, integrators, consultants, and manufacturers committed to supporting database systems have morphed from one-on-one partnerships into huge ecosystems in which they have become interdependent on one another, and are subject to cross-winds of trends and shifts that are shaping their networks. Nowhere is this more apparent than the huge ecosystem that has developed around Oracle. With Oracle's never-ending string of acquisitions, new functionality, and widespread adoption by enterprises, trends that shape this ecosystem are certain to have far-reaching effects on the rest of the IT world. Concerns that percolate through the ecosystem reflect — and influence — broad business concerns. New paradigms — from cloud computing to big data to competing on analytics — are taking root within the Oracle ecosystem long before anywhere else.
Posted September 19, 2012
EMC and Alpine Data Labs, under a formal reseller agreement, have released a joint solution that combines Alpine's predictive analytics application with EMC's Greenplum analytics platform. EMC resells the Alpine Data Labs product suite, including Alpine Miner and Illuminator, integrated with EMC Greenplum Database, EMC Greenplum Chorus, EMC Greenplum HD, and EMC Greenplum Data Computing Appliance (DCA). An in-database solution for big data predictive analytics, the joint offering from EMC and Alpine eases deployment and accelerates time to value for improved insights into big data. Additionally, customers benefit from coordinated Alpine/EMC global support.
Posted September 18, 2012
IBM unveiled new social sentiment analysis tools, based on its sophisticated analytics technologies, targeted at helping cities better measure and understand public opinions on key issues and services, such as public transportation or education. With a wealth of online content and public commentary on social channels such as Twitter and Facebook, city officials need new ways to measure positive, neutral and negative opinions shared by citizens regarding important city issues. IBM's advanced analytics and natural language processing technologies - used to analyze large volumes of public social media data in order to assess and understand citizen opinions - are now available to city governments around the world via new capabilities delivered with the IBM Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) for Smarter Cities.
Posted September 17, 2012
Australia-based Koorong Books has migrated its enterprise computer system to run on the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance object database, enhancing its legacy system and improving its performance and integration. One of the most important characteristics of the next generation of applications is that they will utilize all of the data in the enterprise, Robert Nagle, vice president of Software Development, InterSystems, tells DBTA.
Posted September 11, 2012
Splunk Inc., a provider of operational intelligence software, has released a cloud service offering for organizations that develop and run applications in the public cloud using services such as Amazon Web Services, Heroku, Google App Engine, Rackspace, and others. Splunk Storm enables users to diagnose and troubleshoot application problems instantly, attain rapid insight into cloud-based applications, as well as monitor vital business metrics to achieve more effective operational intelligence.
Posted September 11, 2012
Syncsort has certified its DMExpress data integration software for high-performance loading of HP's recently released analytics platform software, HP Vertica 6. HP's Vertica FlexStore architecture allows access to any data, including structured, semi-structured and unstructured, stored in any location. "As companies are looking to do more with analytical data stores like Vertica, they need to load their big data into Vertica very quickly. And they need that to not only happen today but to scale over time as that big data and the volume and variety of data grows," Keith Kohl, Syncsort's director of product management, data integration, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 11, 2012
Business intelligence software vendor Actuate has partnered with VoltDB, provider of ultra-high-throughput relational database systems, to offer a solution that will allow ActuateOne and VoltDB customers to process their big data more quickly and effectively, resulting in improved insights. Together, the VoltDB and ActuateOne alliance is expected to substantially reduce the time from big data access to operational insights, providing customers with a competitive advantage in the market and improving the bottom line.
Posted September 11, 2012
Data protection and management vendor Quantum Corp. has announced that Teradata, an analytic data solutions company, will offer Quantum's Scalar tape libraries and Scalar Key Manager encryption software standard in its enterprise data protection solution. Quantum's Scalar tape libraries feature iLayer management software and are designed for a broad range of data protection and archive environments.
Posted August 28, 2012
Oracle GoldenGate 11g Release 2 (R2), the latest version of Oracle's real-time data integration solution, is now available, featuring greater support for high-volume systems, global implementations and heterogeneous platforms, while enhancing data capture and security. In addition, increased integration with existing Oracle Applications and technologies, including Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Exadata and Oracle Enterprise Manager, enable customers to have faster and more reliable access to information across the enterprise.
Posted August 28, 2012
Big data and cloud analytics vendor Kognitio has partnered with Xtremeinsights, a provider of solutions for leveraging Hadoop in existing data management systems. Together, the partners aim to deliver software and integration technologies to businesses that want to leverage the Hadoop platform and gain actionable insights from their big data. Using its in-memory analytical platform, Kognitio speeds up the analysis of data from Hadoop clusters, enabling ad hoc, real-time analytics at a significantly lower cost. "Xtremeinsights can build the underlying infrastructure so that your business users can do ad hoc analysis on ridiculous amounts of data and get answers in real-time," Michael Hiskey, Kognitio's vice president of marketing and business development, tells DBTA.
Posted August 23, 2012
SAP AG introduced a new solution to help organizations gain real-time insights into market trends and customer sentiment. The SAP rapid-deployment solution for sentiment intelligence with SAP HANA is intended to allow users to analyze customer sentiment from social networking sites, communities, wikis, blogs and other sources, and combine the information with CRM data. Customers that have had success getting started with big data analytics are the ones that have set out to solve a very specific use case or set out to solve a specific problem, David Jonker, director of marketing for database and technology at SAP, tells DBTA. "The rapid deployment solution for sentiment intelligence does exactly that."
Posted August 23, 2012
Informatica, Talend, Jaspersoft, and Pervasive Software Inc. have joined the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program as Technology Partners. To help customers get the most out of its cloud platform products, explains Eric Morse, head of Sales and Business Development, for Google's Cloud Platform, Google work closely with technology companies that provide powerful complementary solutions integrated with the platform.
Posted August 23, 2012
Pentaho's Business Analytics 4.5 is now certified on Cloudera's latest releases, Cloudera Enterprise 4.0 and CDH4. Pentaho also announced that its visual design studio capabilities have been extended to the Sqoop and Oozie components of Hadoop. "Hadoop is a very broad ecosystem. It is not a single project," Ian Fyfe, chief technology evangelist at Pentaho, tells DBTA. "Sqoop and Oozie are shipped as part of Cloudera's distribution so that is an important part of our support for Cloudera as well - providing that visual support which nobody else in the market does today."
Posted August 23, 2012
Oracle has announced Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud Software 2.0. According to Oracle, customers in 43 countries across 22 industries have already adopted Oracle Exalogic, and it is the fastest growing Oracle engineered system with 3x Y/Y sales bookings based on the last two quarters of FY 2012. The second generation of Exalogic is raising the bar even further, with a single integrated system that addresses the key business goals of application owners - to seize market opportunities, lower business risk and reduce cost and complexity, noted Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president for product development at Oracle, who spoke during a webcast presentation to launch the new release.
Posted August 23, 2012
Data management software vendor Terracotta has released the latest version of its flagship product, BigMemory 3.7, providing performance at any scale through in-memory data management. The latest release offers improved in-memory access, allowing customers to store big data in real time with high application speed, performance, and scale. "We've made optimizations that allow people to put more data and capacity into our product so that they get more value out of the data that they put in," Gary Nakamura, general manager of Terracotta, explains to DBTA.
Posted August 23, 2012
SAP BusinessObjects reporting solution vendor LaunchWorks Inc. has partnered with Centigon Solutions, developer of location intelligence solutions for SAP BusinessObjects, to deliver integrated location and mapping intelligence known as GMaps Plugin in secure outward facing dashboards, providing real-time business intelligence. The integration partnership is intended to enable customers to provide better product quality, reduced time and costs, and quicker identification of areas that need improvement by consuming and monetizing business intelligence quickly and accurately.
Posted August 22, 2012
SAP AG has announced a free mobile developer license, a new SAP Mobile Apps Partner program, and additional support for integrating the software development frameworks from Adobe, Appcelerator Titanium, and Sencha with the SAP mobile platform. With the new programs, SAP seeks to encourage the developer community to create new mobile apps for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) environments, David Brutman, senior director, Developer Relations at SAP, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted August 22, 2012
Big data analytics and visualization vendor Centrifuge has released version 2.7 of Visual Network Analysis, its big data analytics platform. Described by the company as the first big data analytics solution that allows users to "bring their own data" without costly data transformation, reducing the need for data scientists, version 2.7 delivers context intelligence and pattern discovery by quickly filtering through large amounts of data, shortening discovery time and reducing cost.
Posted August 21, 2012
Business intelligence software vendor Tableau has announced that direct access to the MapR Distribution for Apache Hadoop for big data analytics is included in Tableau 7.0.7. This enables customers to instantly construct reports, data visualizations and dashboards without any programming or coding. The 7.0.7 update also includes support for Tableau's Desktop and Server products in Japanese.
Posted August 21, 2012
Symantec Corp. has partnered with Hortonworks to introduce the new Symantec Enterprise Solution for Hadoop, providing a scalable, resilient data management solution for handling big data workloads. The add-on solution for Symantec's Cluster File System enables Symantec customers to run big data analytics on their existing storage infrastructure.
Posted August 14, 2012
ParAccel, an enterprise analytics platform provider, has announced the general availability of ParAccel 4.0. "If you consider how analytics have traditionally been run - offline, static, standalone - there's a large gap that needs to be filled if organizations want to meet 21st century demands," says Chuck Berger, CEO at ParAccel. The new release builds on ParAccel's expertise to help organizations achieve high performance, interactive big data analytics with improved speed and reliability
Posted August 14, 2012
Attunity Ltd., a provider of information availability software solutions, has signed a distribution partnership agreement with Tokyo-based Insight Technology Inc. (ITI). The reseller agreement provides ITI the rights to distribute Attunity's data replication solutions in Japan, together with ITI's database machine "Insight Qube." "The partnership with Attunity is an important and strategic one for ITI," says Ichiro Obata, CEO at Insight Technology, Inc. "The key reason is big data. Making big data available is a critical need for today's top companies in Japan and all over the world, yet accessing and managing it quickly and efficiently for analytics and disaster recovery initiatives is a persistent challenge."
Posted August 14, 2012
Throughout the 2000s, a huge number of website developers rejected the Enterprise Java or .NET platforms for web development in favor of the "LAMP" stack - Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/Python/PHP. Although the LAMP stack was arguably less scalable or powerful than the Java or .NET frameworks, it was typically easier to learn, faster in early stages of development - and definitely cheaper. When enterprise architects designed systems, they often chose commercial application servers and databases (Oracle, Microsoft, IBM). But, when web developers or startups faced these decisions, the LAMP stack was often the default choice.
Posted August 09, 2012
Oracle has enhanced its Exastack Optimized program with the ability to achieve Oracle Exastack Optimized status for Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. In addition, partners can now test their solutions on the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 through the Oracle Exastack Labs, remotely accessible environments for the purposes of testing and tuning applications on the latest major releases of key Oracle Exastack components. Part of the Oracle Exastack Program, Oracle Exastack Optimized enables independent software vendors (ISVs) and other qualifying members of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) to optimize their applications to run faster and more reliably on Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud.
Posted August 08, 2012