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Business Intelligence and Analytics

The world of Business Intelligence and Analytics is evolving quickly. Increasingly, the emphasis is on real-time Business Intelligence to enable faster decision making, and on Data Visualization, which enables data patterns to be seen more clearly. Key technologies involved in preparing raw data to be used for Business Intelligence, Reporting and Analytics – including ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load), CDC (Change Data Capture), and Data Deduplication – support a wide range of goals within organizations.



Business Intelligence and Analytics Articles

The Pythian Group Inc., a remote database infrastructure services company and a Platinum member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork has announced the implementation of the Sun Oracle Database Machine at LinkShare Corporation, a division of Rakuten, Inc., and the launch of Pythian's Oracle Exadata services practice.

Posted July 21, 2010

TIBCO Software is targeting the mid market with TIBCO Silver Spotfire, a fully functional on-demand offering that enables users to create, publish and share custom dashboards or reports for business analytics and business intelligence (BI) in the cloud. According to the vendor, TIBCO Silver Spotfire enables visual analytics and interactive dashboards to be created and published to the cloud in minutes without requiring time-consuming setup or infrastructure. The TIBCO Silver Spotfire offering is available at no charge for one-year and provides an authoring client, web-based sharing and hosting for the user's favorite personal or business Spotfire application.

Posted July 20, 2010

EMC Corporation has signed a definitive agreement to acquire California-based Greenplum, Inc. Greenplum is a privately-held provider of data warehousing technology, and a key enabler of "big data" clouds and self-service analytics.

Posted July 13, 2010

The Data Warehousing Institute will present the TDWI World Conference 2010 with a focus on creating an Agile BI environment. The conference will take place at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego Hotel, August 15-20, 2010. "Agile is becoming very hot in the business intelligence industry and in data warehousing. It has been mainstream in software development for some time, but is coming of age now in business intelligence," Paul Kautza, director of education of TDWI, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Posted July 13, 2010

Oracle has introduced Oracle Business Intelligence 11g. "The new release allows customers to integrate relational and OLAP analysis across a multitude of different federated data sources and presents that in a very simple way to end users so that they can do analysis on their own without understanding or needing to know that there might be potentially multiple data sources beneath," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle Business Intelligence, tells DBTA. Representing the result of a large investment in simplifying the end user experience, adds Rodwick, companies will see "very interactive dashboards that are completely live and completely interconnected and allow business people to do their own analysis without really needing to go into any kind of query tool." The new release also provides new capablities for search and collaboration, and enhanced performance, scalability, and security through deeper integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g and other components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Posted July 12, 2010

Maxwell Systems, a provider of complete construction business management software solutions, and Entrinsik, a provider of operational reporting and analysis solutions, are partnering to offer Maxwell Systems' clients Informer Web Reporting, a powerful web-based reporting and analysis solution that provides technical, business, and front-line users with real-time access to information from multiple systems, platforms, or locations.

Posted July 12, 2010

When integrating data, evaluating objects from multiple sources aids in determining their equivalence. Each source may identify customers, but determining which customer from each system represents the same customer can prove daunting. Sometimes matching things is straight-forward; for example, if all sources should have an accurate social security number or taxpayer ID, success involves simply linking the matching numbers.

Posted July 12, 2010

Oracle today announced Oracle Business Intelligence 11g, an integrated and scalable suite of business intelligence products for helping customers to achieve better business visibility and alignment. The new release provides a unified environment for accessing and analyzing data that resides in relational, OLAP, and XML data sources; improved end user experience with a new integrated scorecard application and innovations in enterprise reporting, visualization, search and collaboration; and enhanced performance, scalability, and security through deeper integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g and other components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

Posted July 07, 2010

Informatica, a provider of data integration software, has launched the Informatica Marketplace, which is intended to enable Informatica customers to lower their cost of deployment and speed time-to-market. Using pre-built components, customers will not have to manually code solutions, but can leverage the knowledge of the community to help deliver a specific data integration solution. The Informatica Marketplace will provide vendors, partners and individual developers with a central location to buy and sell assets and solutions called "Blocks." A Block can be developed for on-premise or cloud use and may include data models, mappings, mapplets, tools, utilities, packaged services, methodologies, white papers, connectors and other useful resources. Users will be able to browse Blocks for industry-specific solutions or platform use cases.

Posted July 06, 2010

expressor software, a provider of data integration solutions, announced version 2.3 of the expressor semantic data integration system, which features enhanced low-latency data processing performance and strengthened support for Netezza. The new release includes new data windowing functionality that provides developers with fine-grained, real-time data control. expressor now also includes several connectivity enhancements, including support for Netezza NPS 5.0 and bi-directional connectivity with Netezza via ODBC.

Posted July 06, 2010

The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, and San Francisco-based IT Convergence (ITC), which provides solutions for Oracle Database, and the Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle E-Business Suites, have expanded their OAUG & ITC Oracle Applications Workshops series with the addition of several upcoming Oracle R12 regional workshops in Atlanta; Denver; Dallas; and Madison, Wis. The Oracle Applications workshops are designed to assist users in learning the new functions and features of Oracle solutions. The " R12 Financials New Features" workshop offers an overview of R12 functional enhancements, new features and latest modules in the Oracle R12 Financial product suite. For users planning to migrate to R12, the " Preparing for an Oracle R12 Upgrade" workshop provides an outlet to learn Oracle Applications Release 12's functional and technical architecture in detail.

Posted July 06, 2010

EnterpriseDB, a supplier of PostgreSQL-based solutions, and Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse and analytic appliances, has formed a new partnership intended to ease database migration projects. Under the agreement, Netezza will resell EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server, which includes its Oracle Compatibility Layer, as Netezza Migrator. Migrator will be compatible with the Netezza TwinFin appliance.

Posted June 29, 2010

Infobright, an open source data warehousing company, has announced Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE) 3.4, which provides performance improvements for analytics involving large volumes of data. The release includes query performance improvements of up to 500%, delete performance improvement of over 1600%, the ability to run queries while data is loading, more efficient workload management, and support for multi-language data. "Our focus is on providing the best query performance possible, but always balancing that with low cost and ease of use," Susan Davis, vice president of marketing, Infobright, tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Posted June 29, 2010

InterSystems Corporation has announced that CareGroup Healthcare System, a Boston-based integrated delivery network (IDN) comprised of four hospitals, has selected the InterSystems Ensemble rapid integration and development platform to replace its legacy eGate platform for strategic integration throughout the organization. In addition to determining that Ensemble could support all current file and application interfaces, CareGroup found that configuration was fairly straightforward-an important consideration in an organization where Ensemble will eventually handle more than 200 system and information interfaces. "Ensemble will be used to support data integration throughout the IDN," states Steve Herzog, senior director, Financial Systems at CareGroup "Our strategy is to deploy Ensemble at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center first and then to the community hospitals that are included in the CareGroup network."

Posted June 29, 2010

UniVerse 11.1, scheduled for release in Q3 of this year, will include the External Database Access functionality that already exists in UniData. EDA allows users to map files to the format for another database, and then write directly to it. UniData EDA originally shipped with just a driver for DB2. "We released the API for building additional drivers with UniData 7.2. Once we were acquired by Rocket, we committed to delivering a driver for Microsoft SQL Server. Now we're in the process of building a driver that will work with Oracle," Susie Siegesmund, vice president and general manager, Rocket U2, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Rocket U2 is now looking for people who want to help by testing the driver with their application.

Posted June 23, 2010

Maxwell Systems, a provider of complete construction business management software solutions, and Entrinsik, a provider of operational reporting and analysis solutions, are partnering to offer Maxwell Systems' clients Informer Web Reporting, a powerful web-based reporting and analysis solution that provides technical, business, and front-line users with real-time access to information from multiple systems, platforms, or locations.

Posted June 23, 2010

The preliminary agenda for Sybase TechWave 2010, to be held August 9-11 at the Hilton Washington, in Washington, DC, is available now. Sybase has announced it is planning to expand the event to include another day of technical training

Posted June 23, 2010

Attunity Ltd., a provider of real-time data integration and event capture software, has introduced the new Attunity PowerPivot Connector for Oracle, a dedicated and optimized solution for making Oracle data available in Microsoft PowerPivot. Attunity also announced the availability of additional certified connectors that enable PowerPivot users to access data from many heterogeneous sources.

Posted June 16, 2010

IBM today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Coremetrics, a leader in web analytics software. IBM says that the acquisition of Coremetrics, a privately held company based in San Mateo, Calif., will expand its business analytics capabilities by enabling organizations to use a cloud-based delivery model to gain real-time insight into consumer interactions internally and through social media networks to develop faster, more targeted marketing campaigns. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Posted June 15, 2010

Oracle yesterday announced Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g. A component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g supports all types of processes with a new unified process foundation, targeted user-centric design and new social BPM capabilities, and includes a native implementation of BPMN 2.0. Historically, when choosing BPM solutions organizations have had to make a choice between a business user-friendly solution or one that provides rich support for the IT and integration capabilities, David Shaffer, vice president, product management, Oracle Fusion Middleware, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "What's really unique here is that we are offering a single product that is complete and unified," Shaffer emphasizes.

Posted June 15, 2010

Composite Software, Inc. has introduced the newest version of the Composite Information Server Data Virtualization Platform to address the increasing demand by global enterprises with complex and disparate information systems for more agile, cost-effective data integration solutions. With capabilities ranging from upfront data discovery and modeling to ongoing operations monitoring, Composite's platform provides a comprehensive data virtualization offering.

Posted June 08, 2010

Yesterday, at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2010 in New Orleans Attunity Ltd., a provider of real-time data integration and event capture software, introduced the new Attunity PowerPivot Connector for Oracle, a dedicated and optimized solution for making Oracle data available in Microsoft PowerPivot. Attunity also announced the availability of additional certified connectors that enable PowerPivot users to access data from many heterogeneous sources.

Posted June 08, 2010

The newest version of the Vertica Analytic Database is now commercially available worldwide. New features support new types of analytics, improve the way queries are executed in terms of better utilization of computing resources, and internationalize the release. "When you look at these things in combination, it really broadens the addressable market that is available to Vertica," David Menninger vice president of marketing, Vertica, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Vertica 4.0 is already delivering business benefits to some of the world's biggest financial services, communications, internet, healthcare and retail companies, according to the vendor. For example, customers who are tight on available computing resources are reporting Vertica 4.0 is helping them "do more with less" with a new workload manager that lets them manage complex mixed query workloads to best meet business priorities. Others who had no prior experience working with columnar databases are taking advantage of Vertica's new "load-and-query" data designer, which automatically generates optimized storage structures greatly simplifying development and tuning.

Posted June 08, 2010

Oracle today announced the availability of Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g, a comprehensive, integrated and high-performance content management solution, aimed at helping organizations increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve content security.

Posted June 08, 2010

Customer service is always important but never more critical than during difficult economic times, when wasting time is just not acceptable and customer satisfaction is an imperative. Atlantic Detroit Diesel-Allison sells and services a full line of Detroit Diesel, Mercedes-Benz, and MTU engines, and the automatic transmissions offered by the Allison Transmission Division of General Motors Corporation. Atlantic DDA had initiated a plan to improve its service department by improving order processing, thus driving more revenue, with additional goals of gaining operational efficiency and heightening customer satisfaction. In order to achieve these objectives, Atlantic DDA needed to make real-time information available to its teams of service representatives.

Posted June 07, 2010

The Rocket U2 team has announced a call for beta participants for its new product, U2 DataVu. Based on Rocket Shuttle, U2 DataVu will provide U2 developers with powerful and flexible ad hoc query, reporting and dashboard capabilities. With native access to UniData and UniVerse U2, developers can use U2 DataVu's graphical drag and drop capabilities to build visual reports and dashboards with zero programming.

Posted June 07, 2010

Entrinsik, a provider of web-based operational reporting and analysis solutions, recently announced that its first-ever Informer User Conference will be held in Wrightsville Beach, NC, October 11-12.

Posted June 07, 2010

Kore Technologies, a provider of enterprise integration and e-commerce web solutions for MultiValue and Microsoft SQL Server databases, is now a resale partner for Rocket Software's CorVu business intelligence (BI) and analytics products. CorVu is a product that gives BI users the ability to create interactive reports, web-based pivot tables with drill-down, executive dashboards, and extensive graphing capabilities, explains Mark Dobransky, managing partner at Kore Technologies. "It is a very modern way of presenting data, being able to slice and dice it, and put that really in the hands of the end users," he tells 5 Minute Briefing.

Posted June 07, 2010

Before we go any further, let me briefly answer the question posed in this column's title: "No Way!" OK ... with that out of the way, let's discuss the issue ... Every so often, some industry pundit gets his opinions published by declaring that "Database administrators are obsolete" or that "we no longer need DBAs." Every time I hear this, it makes me shake my head sadly as I regard just how gullible IT publications can be.

Posted June 07, 2010

In only a few years' time, the world of data management has been altered dramatically, and this is a change that is still running its course. No longer are databases run in back rooms by administrators worrying about rows and columns. Now, actionable information is sought by decision makers at all levels of the enterprise, and the custodians of this data need to work closely with the business.That's because, in the wake of the recent financial crisis and economic downturn, there's a push from both high-level corporate management and regulators to achieve greater understanding and greater transparency across the enterprise, Jeanne Harris, executive research fellow and a senior executive at the Accenture Institute for High Performance, and co-author, along with Tom Davenport, of Competing on Analytics and Analytics at Work, tells DBTA. "In many ways, I think the ultimate result of the financial crisis is that executives realized they cannot delegate analytics to subordinates; they can't view it as technology or math that doesn't really affect them."

Posted June 07, 2010

In the midst of turbulent times, many successful businesses learned an important lesson: The closer IT works with the business, the better an organization can weather the storms that blow in. Thus, many savvy companies understand that the managers and professionals who oversee information technology and applications need to be well incentivized to stay on. At the same time, these professionals understand the need to develop expertise in business management and communications. Many companies are looking to information technology to provide an additional competitive edge, and see their Oracle enterprise systems as the cornerstone of this strategy. As a result, a survey finds that Oracle enterprise application managers and professionals appear to have weathered the economic storm. The survey, conducted among 334 members of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) by Unisphere Research, and sponsored by Motion International, finds an increase in the number of Oracle technology professionals who are near or surpassing the $100,000 mark in their base salaries.

Posted June 07, 2010

Panorama Software, a provider of proactive business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the release of NovaView 6.2, the newest version of its flagship suite of web-enabled BI applications. Oracle connectivity is a key addition to the available data sources, making Oracle relational database data instantly available for interactive, multi-dimensional analysis with the entire NovaView product stack.

Posted June 02, 2010

Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of database design, development and management tools for all major database platforms, has unveiled a new line of XE branded database products that incorporate three distinguishing features - deep, native support across all major databases with a consistent user interface, centralized license management and on-demand tool access via Embarcadero ToolCloud, and an easy upgrade path to Embarcadero All-Access XE.

Posted June 02, 2010

Embarcadero Technologies, a provider of database design, development and management tools for all major database platforms, has unveiled a new line of XE branded database products that incorporate three distinguishing features - deep, native support across all major databases with a consistent user interface, centralized license management and on-demand tool access via Embarcadero ToolCloud, and an easy upgrade path to Embarcadero All-Access XE.

Posted June 01, 2010

At its Information On Demand conference in Rome, IBM unveiled new software to place the power of predictive analytics into the hands of business users for faster, more insightful decision making. According to the company, with three clicks, business users can now build a predictive model within a configurable web browser interface, and run simulations and "what-if" scenarios that compare and test the best business outcomes before the model is ever deployed into an operational system. Business users now have full control over the analytic process, enabling them to make accurate decisions in real-time, based on changes in strategy, customer buying patterns and behaviors, or fluctuating market conditions.

Posted June 01, 2010

To help organizations benefit from the data explosion, IBM has unveiled a new portfolio of services and solutions open source technology designed for analysis of large volumes of data. IBM InfoSphere BigInsights is powered by Apache Hadoop, and is designed to help organizations analyze and visualize petabyte-sized quantities of data.

Posted June 01, 2010

IBM and AT&T announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire Sterling Commerce from AT&T for approximately $1.4 billion in cash. The acquisition of the Dublin, OH-based company will expand IBM's ability to help organizations create more intelligent and dynamic business networks by simplifying and automating the way they connect and communicate with customers, partners and suppliers both on-premise or through cloud computing delivery models.

Posted June 01, 2010

At its Information On Demand conference in Rome, IBM unveiled new software to place the power of predictive analytics into the hands of business users for faster, more insightful decision making. According to the company, with three clicks, business users can now build a predictive model within a configurable Web browser interface, and run simulations and "what-if" scenarios that compare and test the best business outcomes before the model is ever deployed into an operational system. Business users now have full control over the analytic process, enabling them to make accurate decisions in real-time, based on changes in strategy, customer buying patterns and behaviors, or fluctuating market conditions.

Posted June 01, 2010

Sybase has unveiled the Sybase Mobility Platform, a framework of best-in-class mobility servers, mobile applications and mobile services to empower enterprises to transform the way they connect with their customers and enable their employees. With mobility driving significant evolution in the enterprise and the IT industry at large, Sybase leverages its proven expertise, leading solutions and strong partner ecosystem to help enterprises better communicate, work and transact, globally on a fully integrated mobility platform

Posted May 26, 2010

SAP and Sybase, Inc. have announced that SAP's subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Sybase, in a transaction that will bring them together to enable companies to become better-run "unwired enterprises." The planned transaction is expected to close in July 2010, and, according to the companies, Sybase, based in Dublin, Calif., will be run as a standalone company under the name "Sybase an SAP company."

Posted May 26, 2010

Kore Technologies, a provider of enterprise integration and e-commerce web solutions for MultiValue and Microsoft SQL Server databases, is now a resale partner for Rocket Software's CorVu business intelligence (BI) and analytics products.

Posted May 26, 2010

Entrinsik, a provider of web-based operational reporting and analysis solutions, recently announced that its first-ever Informer User Conference will be held in Wrightsville Beach, NC, October 11-12.

Posted May 26, 2010

The Rocket U2 team has announced a call for beta participants for its new product, U2 DataVu. Based on Rocket Shuttle, U2 DataVu will provide U2 developers with powerful and flexible ad hoc query, reporting and dashboard capabilities. With native access to UniData and UniVerse U2, developers can use U2 DataVu's graphical drag and drop capabilities to build visual reports and dashboards with zero programming.

Posted May 26, 2010

IBM announced on Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sterling Commerce from AT&T for approximately $1.4 billion in cash. The acquisition of the Dublin, Ohio-based company will expand IBM's ability to help organizations create more intelligent and dynamic business networks by simplifying and automating the way they connect and communicate with customers, partners and suppliers both on-premise or through cloud computing delivery models. IBM and AT&T expect the transaction to close in the second half of 2010, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Posted May 25, 2010

DataFlux, a provider of data management solutions, and Teradata, a provider of data warehousing and enterprise analytics, today announced a partnership agreement intended to help add data quality technology to Teradata's data warehousing and master data management (MDM) environments.

Posted May 25, 2010

XtremeData, a provider of large data analytics and complex computing solutions, showcased the dbX 100 Series of desk-side analytical data warehouse appliances at TDWI in Chicago. Leveraging the Cray CX1 desk-side supercomputer, the new product line is intended to provide super computing price/performance for business intelligence (BI) analysts and statistical researchers in an affordable departmental-sized system package. Designed specifically for the unconstrained analysis and exploration of large data sets, the dbX family of appliances is unique among competing products in leveraging the best of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Linux server offerings, while seamlessly integrating SQL acceleration, according to XtremeData.

Posted May 25, 2010

Sybase has announced the upcoming general availability of Sybase IQ 15.2, the latest version of the analytics server. With full text search, query federation and web-enabled analytics, IQ 15.2 delivers faster and consistently more accurate business answers and reporting by turning raw data into actionable information through analytics.

Posted May 25, 2010

Simba Technologies Inc., a provider of standards-based data access products, solutions and services for both relational and multi-dimensional data sources, has announced that Oracle's Technology Network has released an Oracle By Example (OBE) tutorial covering how to use Microsoft Excel 2007 with Oracle 11g OLAP data for easy and powerful ad hoc query, analysis and reporting. The direct Excel to Oracle connectivity is made possible by Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP data connectivity product.

Posted May 20, 2010

EMC Corporation and Informatica Corporation have announced that Informatica Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Master Data Management (MDM) solutions have been added to EMC Select. Under this agreement, EMC will resell Informatica ILM and MDM products and services, to further extend the value of EMC's intelligent tiered storage, archive and enterprise content management platforms.

Posted May 18, 2010

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