Business Intelligence and Analytics Articles
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
Teradata Corporation, which already had an 11% ownership interest in Aster Data Systems, Inc, has signed a definitive agreement to pay $263 million for the remaining ownership interest in the company. Aster Data is a provider of software for advanced analytics and the management of a variety of diverse data that is not structured. The combination of Teradata and Aster Data technologies will enable businesses to unlock the new intelligence within the burgeoning volumes of big data. "Teradata is recognized as an innovator and leader in data warehousing, and the addition of Aster Data will enable us to leapfrog into a leadership position in the emerging big data market. This is a great opportunity and something our customers have been asking for," said Scott Gnau, chief development officer, Teradata Corporation.
Posted March 08, 2011
Oracle has announced Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Release 3.1, a comprehensive update with the first releases of AIA pre-built integrations based on and certified for industry-leading Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g. Release 3.1 includes nine cross-industry Process Integration Packs (PIP), eight vertical PIPs, and two direct integrations certified for Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g. "They are really meant to be accelerators," says Tim Hall, senior director of Oracle's product management, Application Integration, of the prebuilt integrations. They are intended to overcome common issues that customers will face when they are doing integration between applications, "and these things are not unique to Oracle; they are industry challenges," he explains.
Posted March 02, 2011
Composite Software, a data virtualization vendor, says it is joining with Clarity Resource Group, a business intelligence (BI) consulting firm, to offer data virtualization products and services that increase BI agility in financial services, communications, retail, health care and energy industries.
Posted March 01, 2011
InetSoft Technology, a provider of dashboard, reporting and mashup solutions, has announced a new release of its flagship business intelligence software application, Style Intelligence. The new release aims to expands upon InetSoft's concept of agile BI, with several feature enhancements that will allow developers and administrators to work more efficiently and nimbly.
Posted March 01, 2011
The market for data warehouse appliances - solutions consisting of integrated software and hardware - is heating up, with new twists emerging from both established and new appliance vendors. Netezza, an early proponent of the appliance approach, was acquired in November 2010 by IBM. Here, Phil Francisco, vice president, product management and product marketing for IBM Netezza, shares his views on what's changing and what's ahead for appliances. Going forward, he anticipates that there will be very specific, vertically-oriented solutions that are built on appliances, which will take into account the kinds of data models and the kind of functionality that is required for industries such as telco, retail, and financial services.
Posted February 23, 2011
Talend, an open source integration tools vendor, has announced the release of Talend Integration Factory, a production-ready distribution of the popular open source enterprise service bus (ESB) from the Apache Camel project. This announcement follows the December 2010 introduction of Talend Service Factory, a repackaged distribution of Apache CXF, optimized for the enterprise. The product initiatives leverage tools from SOPERA, which Talend acquired in November.
Posted February 22, 2011
Infobright, a provider of open source analytic databases, announced major product upgrades that include query performance boosts well as remote data loading capabilities. New features will be available in both Infobright Enterprise Edition (IEE, version 3.5) and Infobright Community Edition (ICE, version 3.5).
Posted February 22, 2011
SHARE convenes on February 27th in Anaheim, with an agenda packed with industry initiatives and knowledge-sharing on the latest best practices and technology trends. In this exclusive Q&A, SHARE president Janet Sun provides her vision for SHARE in the coming years.
Posted February 22, 2011
HP announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Vertica, a privately held, real-time analytics platform company based in Billerica, Mass. According to HP, the acquisition will enhance its capabilities for information optimization, adding sophisticated, real-time business analytics for large and complex sets of data in physical, virtual and cloud environments. Vertica's platform aims to help customers analyze massive amounts of data quickly, resulting in "just-in-time" business intelligence.
Posted February 15, 2011
CA Erwin Data Modeler r8, a solution for collaboratively visualizing and managing data across multiple systems, was announced by CA Technologies. Enhanced visualization and different ways to visualize data models in non-traditional formats is a main theme of the release, Donna Burbank, senior director of marketing, Data Management, CA Technologies, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The goal is to help ERwin, an established product with a 20-plus-year track record, to reach new audiences, in particular, business and non-technical users, as well as provide improved workflow for traditional CA Erwin Data Modeler users. "We completely ripped out our old user interface and put in a new one," says Burbank. With features like graphics, themes, fonts, and auto layout, she observes, "It is really more like a drawing tool on the front with the power of a data modeling tool behind it."
Posted February 15, 2011
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, has announced its 2011 event schedule and the latest expansion of its Linux conference, LinuxCon, to Europe. LinuxCon Europe will take place October 26-28, 2011 in Prague, Czech Republic. The Linux Foundation has also released the Call for Presentations for its full 2011 event lineup, which includes LinuxCon conferences in North America, Japan, Brazil and Europe, as well as other events focusing on embedded Linux in both North America and Europe.
Posted February 09, 2011
Dr. David Ferrucci, the scientist leading the IBM Research team that has created the Watson supercomputer, will host a keynote session on IBM's Jeopardy! project at The Linux Foundation's annual End User Summit in March. "Watson" will compete on Jeopardy! against the television game show's two most successful contestants. The man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition will air on February 14, 15 and 16, 2011, with two matches being played over three consecutive days.
Posted February 09, 2011
Over the past 3 years, the IOUG ResearchWire studies conducted by Unisphere Research have focused on Oracle technology as well as trends affecting data professionals, allowing IT professionals to benchmark where their organizations stand within their own technology environment. Executive Summaries of all IOUG ResearchWire reports are publicly available for free download and full study reports are also available to IOUG members at no charge when they sign in with their user name and password.
Posted February 02, 2011
Ingres Corporation, an analytic database vendor, has teamed up with Jaspersoft, a provider of business intelligence software, to certify deployments of Jaspersoft with Ingres VectorWise. Jaspersoft's business intelligence products were tested with Ingres VectorWise, and reportedly delivered faster query response times compared to other database solutions that run on Jaspersoft, the company says.
Posted February 01, 2011
IBM has launched new business analytics software called Cognos Express Planner which is designed to help midsize organizations drive a more integrated, automated and collaborative approach to building timely financial plans, budgeting, anticipating performance gaps, prioritizing resources, and gaining insights into profit and growth. "What we set out to do with the Express family is to help overcome the barriers to adoption that midsize organizations had," Dan Potter, product marketing executive for the IBM Business Analytics team, tells 5 Minute Briefing. These organizations need solutions that are easy to install, configure and keep running; that help them overcome budget barriers with not only lower price but also a modular approach; and that provide their users with self-service capabilities, he explains.
Posted February 01, 2011
EMC has introduced a free Community Edition of the EMC Greenplum Database, the high-performance massively parallel processing (MPP) database product, along with free analytic algorithms and data mining tools. The new offering is intended to remove the cost barrier to entry for big data power tools for developers, data scientists, and other data professionals, according to EMC. This free set of tools will enable the community to better understand their data, gain deeper insights and better visualize insights, as well as contribute and participate in the development of new tools and solutions. With the Community Edition stack, developers can build complex applications to collect, analyze and operationalize big data leveraging big data tools including the Greenplum Database with its in-database analytic processing capabilities.
Posted February 01, 2011
Predixion Software, a developer of self-service predictive analytics solutions, and Neudesic, a Microsoft National Systems Integrator and Gold Certified Partner, are embarking on an 18-city seminar series to demonstrate how to quickly and cost-effectively deliver self-service predictive analytics utilizing the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform and Predixion's cloud-based predictive analytics solution
Posted February 01, 2011
The market for data warehouse appliances - solutions consisting of integrated software and hardware - is heating up, with new twists emerging from both established and new appliance vendors. Netezza, an early proponent of the appliance approach, was acquired in November 2010 by IBM. Here, Phil Francisco, vice president, product management and marketing for IBM Netezza, shares his views on what's changing and what's ahead. Going forward, Francisco sees very specific, vertically-oriented solutions that are built on appliances, whether it be for Telco, retailers, or financial services. "These appliances will take into account the kinds of data models that are required, but also the kind of functionality that is required for those industries and relieve even more of the day-to-day administration requirements," he notes.
Posted February 01, 2011
HP and Microsoft have announced four new converged application appliances that combine applications, infrastructure and productivity tools into a single system. In addition, there is the previously-announced HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance, an enterprise-level mission-critical system. Now available with a starting price of $2 million, the HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance is said to deliver up to 200 times faster queries and 10 times the scalability of traditional SQL Server deployments."Our appliances have been engineered from the beginning with time to solution in mind," Fausto Ibarra, senior director of Business Intelligence at Microsoft, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "We are really offering a unique value proposition."
Posted January 25, 2011
Magic Software Enterprises Ltd., a provider of cloud and on-premise application platform and business integration (BI) solutions, has signed a global alliance agreement to resell software from MicroStrategy Inc., a worldwide provider of BI software, enabling the delivery of an integrated BI solution that will allow business users to turn raw data from various sources in the enterprise for improved decision making.
Posted January 25, 2011
MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, says that in benchmark tests of its latest software release, MicroStrategy 9.0.2, the software can support more than 100,000 active users while delivering average response times under two seconds. MicroStrategy's high performance and scalability tests consisted of a four-node clustered configuration of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server containing a total of 32 CPU cores, running on commodity Intel-based hardware with the Red Hat Linux ES operating system. A query volume of 560,000 round-trip queries per hour was sustained while supporting over 100,000 active users, which can be extrapolated to a total user population of 500,000 people, the vendor says.
Posted January 18, 2011
Queplix Corp., a data virtualization software vendor, has introduced three new Application Software Blades in Virtual Data Manager enabling companies to integrate social media data with internal corporate systems. Companies can now automatically capture information from FaceBook, LinkedIn and Google Contacts and harmonize it with their own corporate data. According to Queplix, companies typically struggle with how to incorporate and leverage the data within social media communities for business gain. "The value of social media and its potential to enhance corporate initiatives is widely recognized, yet barely tapped," said Mark Cashman, chief executive officer, Queplix. With the new integration capability, Queplix allows organizations to combine data from social media sources with internal information, thus providing a new layer of intelligence to business-supporting functions.
Posted January 18, 2011
The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) will present the first event in its 2011 conference series February 13-18 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, with the theme "Building An Enterprise Data Strategy: A Framework For Consistent Information Across The Enterprise." The aim of the 6-day event is to provide attendees with the education they need about how to inventory, govern, integrate, and exploit their data assets. Organizations have "massive amounts of data" as well as a variety of different databases and duplicates of databases, and, as a result, people are not aware of all the data they have and how they can utilize it, Paul Kautza, director of education of TDWI, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The conference will provide classes on how to gain critical executive sponsorship, connect point projects into a unified data management approach, and define and implement a true corporate data strategy that will deliver consistent information across an enterprise.
Posted January 18, 2011
Teradata has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Aprimo, a provider of cloud-based integrated marketing software for approximately $525 million. The transaction is expected to close later this quarter. Aprimo will be integrated into Teradata's operations and will continue to market its products and services under the name Aprimo. Once the acquisition is complete, Aprimo will support the strategy of Teradata's analytic and applications business, including development, marketing, sales, and services going forward.
Posted January 18, 2011
Jaspersoft, a provider of business intelligence software today announced the general availability of Jaspersoft 4, a complete commercial open source BI suite designed for web applications.Jaspersoft 4 leverages a new modular UI architecture to deliver a best-in-class environment for building and deploying BI. By separating the content and presentation layers in line with today's web application standards, Jaspersoft 4 aims to accelerate the process of bringing BI to users. Featuring a new GUI for rich visual dashboarding and self-service features, this latest release of the Jaspersoft Business Intelligence Suite is intended to overcome traditional barriers to adoption of BI, the company says.
Posted January 11, 2011
Oracle has announced a suite of analytics tools intended to help organizations derive greater insight from information in their SAP systems. The new product, Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP, is now part of the Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Applications product family. "What we're announcing is the availability of the first one of those also with out-of-the-box connectivity to SAP R3 and ECC," Paul Rodwick, vice president of product management for Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "These BI apps have a source-specific understanding of all those thousands of complex SAP tables, along with a pre-built ETL built on top of Oracle Data Integrator."
Posted January 11, 2011
Health Insights has signed a partnership agreement to deploy its popular MedicaPlus Hospital and Clinical Information System on the InterSystems CACHÉ high-performance object database. Health Insights' decision to partner with InterSystems follows the successful port of MedicaPlus to run on CACHÉ and a series of tests using industry-standard SQL database queries. By using CACHÉ, Health Insights has boosted the scalability and performance of its applications.
Posted January 11, 2011
The exponentially increasing amounts of data being generated each year make getting useful information from that data more and more critical. The information frequently is stored in a data warehouse, a repository of data gathered from various sources, including corporate databases, summarized information from internal systems, and data from external sources. Analysis of the data includes simple query and reporting, statistical analysis, more complex multidimensional analysis, and data mining.
Posted January 07, 2011