Business Intelligence and Analytics Articles
HP has unveiled a new suite of software which it says is designed to rationalize, measure and improve IT performance called the HP IT Performance Suite. The suite provides CIOs insight from across a comprehensive range of solutions to manage and optimize application development, infrastructure and operations management, security, information management, and financial planning and administration. Each product in the HP Software portfolio improves the performance of the discrete IT functions addressed, while a new IT Executive Scorecard helps technology executives optimize overall IT investments and outcomes.
Posted June 07, 2011
Ingres Corporation, an open-source database and analysis tools vendor, says it is now offering a cloud-based managed service for interactive reporting and analysis. Built on the vendor's VectorWise analytic database, the online toolset, called SkyInsight, is intended to offer rapid data analysis on an on-demand basis.The key to Skylight's purported fast processing is the underlying VectorWise database, Greg Wood, co-president of Ingres, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 07, 2011
Composite Software has announced the certification of its flagship data virtualization product, the Composite Information Server, with MicroStrategy 9. MicroStrategy's business intelligence software enables companies to analyze the volumes of data stored across their enterprise to make better business decisions. In addition to the certification, Composite Software has also signed a global marketing alliance agreement with MicroStrategy, which includes a range of joint marketing programs. "In a time of extreme business change, business users need agile approaches to information," says Robert Eve, executive vice president of marketing of Composite Software.
Posted May 31, 2011
Oracle has unveiled Oracle Retail Merchandising Analytics to offer retailers a new prebuilt business intelligence application that incorporates performance metrics across the entire enterprise and promotes a faster response to market opportunities. "This is a merchandising-specific business intelligence application," David Dorf, senior director of technology strategy for Oracle Retail, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The solution provides insight to critical performance indicators such as item sales, store performance, effectiveness of promotions and markdowns, inventory turn, sales and profit trends, as well as current and potential out-of-stocks.
Posted May 26, 2011
The Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and X2-8 with the Solaris option began shipping just this month. Now in its third generation, the Database Machine combines all the components to create what the company describes as the best platform for running the Oracle Database. Here, Tim Shetler, vice president of Product Management, Oracle, talks about the performance innovations that differentiate Oracle's offering, how customers are using the system today for business advantage, and also — what's ahead.
Posted May 26, 2011
SAP AG and Sybase, Inc., an SAP company, have announced plans to make the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP ERP the first SAP Business Suite application running on Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE). The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando where pilot customers also showcased how they are using SAP ERP on Sybase ASE. In combining SAP applications with Sybase technology, along with "harmonized" customer services and support, the companies say they will be able to offer organizations a new database option for running SAP applications and accessing critical information, providing efficiency gains and cost reductions.
Posted May 25, 2011
Sybase has unveiled Sybase Event Streaming Processor (ESP), a major new version of the Sybase Aleri CEP platform. Sybase ESP, version 5 of the Sybase Aleri Event Stream Processor, provides new capabilities in enterprise scalability and user productivity. According to Sybase, the solution enables customers to deliver real-time applications such as continuous risk assessment, extremely complex low latency algorithmic trading and the creation and dissemination of highly enriched market data, in a fraction of the time that traditional approaches would require.
Posted May 25, 2011
TechWave 2011 will be co-located with SAP TechEd, September 12-16 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. TechWave will continue to deliver targeted training on Sybase products, plus offer attendees access to TechEd keynote sessions, exhibits, special event and other networking functions. Sybase TechWave is the only event that provides in-depth training and education across the range of Sybase products, access to key Sybase partners, and fun and entertaining opportunities for networking and increasing knowledge. The agenda will feature over 150 breakout sessions covering enterprise mobility, data management, application development tools, business intelligence & analytics, mobile commerce and mobile messaging.
Posted May 25, 2011
HP has announced a new financing offer to help organizations accelerate decision making with SAP In-Memory Appliance software (SAP HANA) running on HP Converged Infrastructure. The financing program from HP includes HP infrastructure and services as well as SAP HANA software licenses.
Posted May 25, 2011
SAP AG and Sybase, Inc., an SAP company, have announced plans to make the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP ERP the first SAP Business Suite application running on Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE). The announcement was made at SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando where pilot customers also showcased how they are using SAP ERP on Sybase ASE. In combining SAP applications with Sybase technology, along with "harmonized" customer services and support, the companies say they will be able to offer organizations a new database option for running SAP applications and accessing critical information, providing efficiency gains and cost reductions.
Posted May 25, 2011
After 5 years in Seattle, PASS (the Professional Association for SQL Server) will hold its annual SQL Server and BI conference in Charlotte, NC, in 2013, bringing the event closer to database professionals in the eastern U.S. who may not have been able to make the cross-country trip in the past, as well as making it more convenient for international travelers. PASS Summit 2007 in Denver was the last Summit held outside Seattle.
Posted May 18, 2011
General registration is now open for OAUG Connection Point - EPM/BI, July 20-21, at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue in Seattle. OAUG Connection Point conferences are focused, 2-day regional forums offering Oracle customers and applications users the opportunity to further their education in the fast-moving applications space and to gain insight from top executives and peers. Connection Point events include networking opportunities such as one-on-one meetings with key Oracle executives, as well as a partner showcase.
Posted May 17, 2011
Alpine Data Labs, developer of Alpine Miner, a solution for big data predictive analytics, has received $7.5 million in Series A funding. In addition, after 15 months of product development, the company also announced its 10th production customer and its formal launch in the U.S. market. According to Anderson Wong, Alpine Labs CEO and co-founder, organizations cannot extract all the possible value from their data because it is growing faster than they can analyze it, they don't have enough resources with analytics expertise, and the tools they're using are too complex to get to the answers they need quickly.
Posted May 13, 2011
Big data provides new opportunities to improve customer care, unearth business insights, control operational costs, and in some cases, enable entirely new business models. By having access to larger and broader data sets, you can improve forecasts and projections for the business. A healthcare organization can conduct longitudinal analysis against years of data for patients treated with coronary attacks in order to improve care and speed time to recovery. A retailer can conduct deeper analysis on buying behavior during recessionary times if they have access to large data sets collected during the last economic downturn. Additionally, organizations across many sectors, such as communications, financial services and utilities, face significant regulatory and legal requirements for retaining and providing fast access to historical data for inquiries, audits and reporting.
Posted May 12, 2011
The rise of "big data" solutions - often involving the increasingly common Hadoop platform - together with the growing use of sophisticated analytics to drive business value - such as collective intelligence and predictive analytics - has led to a new category of IT professional: the data scientist.
Posted May 12, 2011
Oracle has introduced new releases of its business intelligence products including Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle Business Intelligence Applications and Oracle Real-Time Decisions. The new capabilities include out-of-the-box iPad and iPhone support, extended OLAP and in-memory platform support, enhanced real-time decision management features, and new certifications.
Posted May 12, 2011
Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc. (ASCI), maker of ActiveBatch Workload Automation and Job Scheduling Software, has received the Informatica Seal of Approval for the ActiveBatch Extension for Informatica. The Informatica Seal of Approval is the result of a rigorous lifecycle testing and validation of up to 30 days by the Informatica Marketplace Certification Team, according to the companies. The ActiveBatch Extension for Informatica supports Informatica PowerCenter and allows users to build "mixed" workflows by coupling them with databases, applications and technologies, across heterogeneous platforms for improved business process automation. Informatica users that require advanced scheduling capabilities can benefit from the ActiveBatch Extension by being able to better manage and control workloads and tasks across disparate systems while improving service levels.
Posted May 10, 2011
Sybase has announced plans for the release of new functionality connecting Sybase Replication Server to Sybase Aleri Streaming Platform. This new functionality will enable data events from heterogeneous databases to be propagated in real-time, via complex event processing (CEP), addressing challenges such as reference data management and risk aggregation.
Posted April 29, 2011
Rocket U2 has introduced the U2 Migration Factory, which facilitates the migration of legacy MultiValue solutions to U2. The U2 Migration Factory combines an Automated Migration Tool (AMT) with the expertise of migration specialists who have completed more than one thousand successful migrations. Free remote assistance is available for basic migrations and proof-of-concept exercises based on the number of users a customer is migrating. Additional assistance is available for comprehensive migration projects including code reworking, assurance testing, project management and status reporting.
Posted April 27, 2011
InterSystems Corporation, which develops and markets advanced integration, database and business intelligence technologies, has announced the winners of its 2011 Innovator Awards, which recognize those who use InterSystems technologies in new ways to create innovative applications and integration solutions. Winners were recognized at the InterSystems Global Summit 2011 conference.
Posted April 27, 2011
MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, announced it has begun shipping the latest release of its BI platform, which includes data visualization capabilities. MicroStrategy 9.2 includes a feature called Visual Insight, which is designed to allow business people to answer business questions on their own, avoiding the lengthy process of report specification and design. Users can access data from a full spectrum of data stores, ranging from massive enterprise data warehouses, to distributed departmental databases, to financial databases, to data that resides on the individual's desktop computer and in Excel spreadsheets.
Posted April 26, 2011
Full 360 Inc., a New York-based systems integrator, has introduced a new release of its elasticBI platform-as-a-service (PaaS). elasticBI pairs Jaspersoft4, the open source BI application, with the Vertica Analytic Database in a PaaS offering that is tightly integrated via the Opscode Chef framework. The platform is offered by Full 360 on Amazon Web Services, the Amazon cloud. According to Full 360, elasticBI provides a complete BI-data warehouse platform that is accessible from a cost and technical perspective for small and mid-market companies, as well as enterprise departments.
Posted April 26, 2011
Database Trends and Applications (DBTA) met with Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) president Mark C. Clark during last week's COLLABORATE 11 conference in Orlando, Florida. Now, more than 2 years following the financial meltdown of late 2008, it is clear that more users are again out attending COLLABORATE. "We have gone through a period of very tight IT budgets, a 2-to-4 year phase of maintenance. Everybody I am talking to is looking at opportunities to do projects this year. And if they aren't doing it this year, they are planning for it next year," said Clark, commenting on the renewed enthusiasm for attending the conference.
Posted April 19, 2011
IBM announced a suite of new software and services aimed at helping organizations transform their business processes. IBM's new unified Business Process Management (BPM) platform, IBM Business Process Manager, is intended to provide companies greater visibility into business operations so they can model, automate, monitor and adjust plans instantly. IBM also announced it is launching a global consulting and services delivery organization for business process improvement. The new services will be delivered via a new methodology, called the IBM Method for Business Process Optimization.
Posted April 18, 2011
Platform Computing, a provider of cluster, grid and cloud management software, has announced support for the Apache Hadoop MapReduce programming model to bring enterprise-class distributed computing to business analytics applications that process big data.
Posted April 12, 2011
EMC has announced three new additions to its EMC Greenplum Data Computing Appliance (DCA) line of products - the High Capacity DCA, the High Performance DCA, and the Data Integration Accelerator - as well as version 4.1 of Greenplum Database.
Posted April 12, 2011
With the annual Oracle users conference COLLABORATE about to begin, Andy Flower, president of the IOUG, spoke with 5 Minute Briefing about the IOUG's strong areas of focus in terms of overall conference content, and how the addition of the MySQL user base into the Oracle community is evolving. Citing a MySQL keynote, 75 sessions at COLLABORATE focused on MySQL, and a new MySQL Council headed by Sarah Novotny, Flower says the IOUG is making strides in giving voice to the MySQL community within the IOUG and setting a stage for positive interaction with Oracle.
Posted April 06, 2011
Oracle has announced three new integrations in support of its open and integrated technology stack. Enhancing its backup and recovery capabilities for Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliance now directly connects to the Oracle Exadata InfiniBand fabric to simplify deployments and accelerate backup and recovery time by more than 50% compared to traditional NAS systems. Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure now provides integration with the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance with rapid iSCSI provisioning that automates desktop provisioning and accelerates virtual desktop deployments. Additionally, Oracle Secure Backup is qualified for Sun ZFS Storage Appliance backup and recovery with Oracle's scalable StorageTek tape libraries.
Posted April 06, 2011
DBAs and IT operational teams, pressured by the unabated flow of data streaming in from an ever wider range of sources, require proactive self-managing and automated systems to supplement or replace manual techniques and processes which are no longer scalable given the rate of data growth, according to the results of a new Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) study on database manageability.
Posted April 05, 2011
Datawatch Corporation, a provider of report analytics products and services, has announced the availability of Datawatch BDS V8, the latest version of the company's enterprise report management, archive and distribution solution. Datawatch BDS is used for high-volume enterprise electronic capture, archiving, management and retrieval of reports, statements, invoices and other business documents, and is capable of managing billions of documents from the point of initiation through delivery. Combined with the Monarch report analytics solution, Datawatch BDS provides a single source from which static report-based data can be automatically transformed into timely and dynamic information and delivered to the right users across the enterprise to quickly satisfy their decision support needs.
Posted April 05, 2011
Big data is one of those terms that is quickly gaining momentum among technologists. If you watch closely, you'll notice that everyone seems to have an opinion on what "big data" means and wants to own the term. As industry experts discuss what to name this problem, in 2011, companies will be tasked with bringing big data from back office offline analytics to customer-facing 24x7 production systems. Customers are paying attention and they need solutions that support not only massive data sets but also mixed information types, extended feature sets, real-time processing, and technical teams that have not hand-coded these systems from the ground up. Here are five big data solution trends we see developing as our customers work hard to solve "big data" or "big information" problems.
Posted April 05, 2011
InterSystems Corporation, which develops and markets advanced integration, database and business intelligence technologies, has announced the winners of its 2011 Innovator Awards, which recognize those who use InterSystems technologies in new ways to create innovative applications and integration solutions. Winners were recognized at the InterSystems Global Summit 2011 conference.
Posted March 29, 2011
SAP AG and IBM have announced the first official performance results of SAP In-Memory Appliance (SAP HANA), finding that the software easily handles 10,000 queries per hour against 1.3 terabytes of data, returning results within seconds. According to the companies, the test scenarios were directly based on the query workload requirements typical in SAP customers' enterprise resource planning (ERP) reporting requirements. They accessed the data found in the sales delivery database tables for the SAP ERP application. The test was part of a joint project between the two companies to deliver real-time analytics by optimizing software and hardware, based on SAP In-Memory Computing technology and IBM's industry-leading 3850 series servers.
Posted March 23, 2011
Revolution Analytics, a commercial provider of software and services based on the open source R project for statistical computing, and IBM Netezza announced they are teaming up to integrate Revolution R Enterprise and the IBM Netezza TwinFin Data Warehouse Appliance. According to the vendors, this will enable customers to directly leverage the capabilities of the open source R statistics language as they run high-performance predictive analytics from within data warehouse platforms.
Posted March 23, 2011
Rocket Software has released the U2 Web Development Environment (U2 WebDE). It is limited to use with the personal editions of UniData and UniVerse, but will allow customers and consultants the opportunity to try out this product free of charge, notes Susie Siegesmund, vice president and general manager, U2 Brand, Rocket Software.
Posted March 23, 2011
Wynne Systems, Inc., an international provider of enterprise software for the equipment and rental industries, has announced a partnership with Entrinsik, Inc. to integrate Entrinsik's Informer web-based reporting software into its Wynne Systems product suite.
Posted March 23, 2011
Data continues growing rapidly, flowing into enterprises from traditional sources as well as new pipelines fueled by web and social media. Often presented in a range of formats and structures, this data onslaught phenomenon has come to be known as "big data." Companies, educational institutions, and government agencies are striving to meet the management challenge of this data deluge as well as mine this wealth of information for business advantage. In this special section, DBTA asks key vendors to explain their strategies for enabling customers to better handle ever-increasing data stores.
Posted March 23, 2011
Predixion Software has launched the Predixion Partner Network, a new practice dedicated to working with business intelligence-focused consulting partners to deliver low-cost, self-service predictive analytics solutions utilizing the Microsoft business intelligence platform. Predixion Software develops and markets collaborative predictive analytics solutions in the public and private cloud that are integrated with Microsoft Corp.'s BI platform.
Posted March 22, 2011
Revolution Analytics, a commercial provider of software and services based on the open source R project for statistical computing, and IBM Netezza announced they are teaming up to integrate Revolution R Enterprise and the IBM Netezza TwinFin Data Warehouse Appliance. According to the vendors, this will enable customers to directly leverage the capabilities of the open source R statistics language as they run high-performance predictive analytics from within data warehouse platforms.
Posted March 21, 2011
On the heels of the IBM Jeopardy! Challenge, in which the IBM Watson system demonstrated the capability to understand natural language, IBM launched a global skills initiative to educate clients, business partners, and college students on how to use IBM business analytics and information management software, and many of the underlying technologies of the Watson computing system, to capture information from new sources and use it to create business opportunities.
Posted March 21, 2011
IBM has announced new software and the creation a new consulting practice dedicated to the emerging category of "Smarter Commerce," focused on helping companies adapt to rising customer demands in today's digitally transformed marketplace. The new software and services offerings, supported by global sales and marketing resources, will address the spectrum of enterprise commerce activities - new ways to buy, sell and secure greater customer loyalty in the era of mobile and social networks. "It's a buyer's world now," says Craig Hayman, general manager of IBM Industry Solutions. "Businesses require a tighter and highly responsive network of suppliers and partners to ensure they deliver the right product or service at the right price, time and place. The key to business success in this unfolding environment is predicting trends and automating market responses in advance to eliminate the gaps between buy and sell, supply and demand."
Posted March 21, 2011
OpenSpan, Inc., a provider of user process management software, announced it has released support for Oracle Complex Event Processing (CEP), a solution for building applications to filter, correlate and process events in real time so that downstream applications, service-oriented architectures and event-driven architectures are driven by real-time intelligence. The new support enables OpenSpan and Oracle CEP to be used together to monitor user activity to detect and prevent fraud and compliance risks or identify cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
Posted March 16, 2011
Fuzzy Logix, LLC, a provider of advanced analytical solutions, has announced the availability of in-database analytics working with IBM Informix database software to serve the large base of customers who are seeking to use easily accessible analytics to gain competitive advantage. The product, DB Lytix, is a rich, in-database analytics library built during more than eleven years of extensive research on advanced analytical methods. It contains functions for mathematical and statistical analysis, data mining, and Monte Carlo simulations. With the library now ported to IBM Informix, DB Lytix can leverage the high performance of Informix to bring gains in processing speed to analytic solutions.
Posted March 15, 2011
Revolution Analytics, a commercial provider of software and services based on the open source R project for statistical computing, and IBM Netezza have announced a partnership to integrate Revolution R Enterprise and the IBM Netezza TwinFin Data Warehouse Appliance. According to the vendors, this will enable customers seeking to run high performance and full-scale predictive analytics from within a data warehouse platform to directly leverage the capabilities of the open source R statistics language. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will work together to create a version of Revolution's software that takes advantage of IBM Netezza's i-class technology so that Revolution R Enterprise can run in-database in an optimal fashion. General availability of this integrated solution is currently planned for later this year.
Posted March 15, 2011
When computers first started to infringe on everyday life, science fiction authors and society in general had high expectations for "intelligent" systems. Isaac Asimov's "I, Robot" series from the 1940s portrayed robots with completely human intelligence and personality, and, in the 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," the onboard computer HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer) had a sufficiently human personality to suffer a paranoid break and attempt to murder the crew!
Posted March 09, 2011
A member of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) since 1992, Mark C. Clark recently took over as president of the organization. Recently, 5 Minute Briefing chatted with Clark about what's in store for members at the annual Oracle users conference COLLABORATE as well as for the year ahead. Helping members prepare for an upgrade to Oracle Applications Release 12, providing additional smaller, more targeted regional events, and a continued emphasis on a return to the basics with networking and education are at the top of his to-do list for 2011.
Posted March 08, 2011