Five Minute Briefing - Information Management
April 3, 2012
Five Minute Briefing - Information Management: April 3, 2012. A concise weekly report with key product news, market research and insight for data management professionals and IT executives.
News Flashes
ClearStory Data has announced an investment from Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures as well as individual investors. The company aims to help business users conduct self-driven big data exploration - making it easier to gather and explore big, diverse, dispersed data from corporate data sources, Hadoop and the web so that they can gain quick insights and discover new business opportunities. "In 2011, the global output of data increased 62%, yet there's a massive shortage in the number of qualified data professionals to process this data," said Sharmila Shahani-Mulligan, CEO and founder of ClearStory Data.
MapR Technologies, Inc., provider of the MapR distribution for Apache Hadoop, has introduced new data connection options for Hadoop to enable a range of data ingress and egress alternatives for customers. These include direct file-based access using standard tools and file-based applications, direct database connectivity, Hadoop specific connectors via Sqoop, Flume and Hive; as well as direct access to popular data warehouses and applications using custom connectors. Additionally, technology providers Pentaho and Talend are partnering with MapR to provide direct integration with MapR's distribution, and MapR has also entered into a partnership with data warehouse and business intelligence platform vendor Tableau Software.
McAfee, a security technology company, is offering a free downloadable audit plug-in for MySQL databases that records full activity audits, which are often required for enterprises to satisfy certain standards and regulations. The plug-in is designed to supplement McAfee's Database Activity Monitoring sensor. In combination, the plug-in and sensor can offer real-time analysis and policy enforcement for small and medium businesses as well as large enterprises.
SAS has released a new high-performance, in-memory solution that employs a visual interface to bring SAS analytics to a greater number of big data consumers, including business users. With Hadoop support and extensive avenues for information-delivery, including the iPad, SAS Visual Analytics is expected to help business and IT users alike make better-informed decisions and increase productivity. The solution is the newest product in the SAS High Performance Analytics family. Along with the ability to share big data insights at near-instant speeds on multiple platforms, Randy Guard, vice president of product management at SAS, tells 5 Minute Briefing that the interface for the new solution provides "a point-and-click/drag-and-drop environment."