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
Solutions from Oracle Are Tailored to Fit the Altered Regulatory Environment for Financial Institutions, Says Oracle's S. Ramakrishnan
Oracle's S. Ramakrishnan, group vice president and general manager for Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications, was in New York last week to provide an update on how financial services institutions are leveraging tailored technology from Oracle - including the recently announced Oracle Financial Services Data Warehouse - to manage the complex information needed to compete profitably and effectively address stringent regulatory requirements.
Jaspersoft Releases Reporting Tool for Eclipse Developers
Jaspersoft, a business intelligence software provider, has released an open source business intelligence design environment for Eclipse. Jaspersoft Studio is intended to provide a platform that enables Eclipse Java developers to build, secure, and share BI reports for free.
Tableau 6.1 Adds Optimized Mobile Support for iPads and Faster Performance
Tableau Software, a provider of business intelligence software, has announced the general availability of Tableau 6.1. "This is the first version of Tableau that is optimized for mobile devices and in particular, the iPad," Francois Ajenstat, director, Product Management, Tableau Software, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Organizations of all sizes are increasingly getting their analytics on the go so they can make better decisions wherever they are. We are trying to make that kind of delivery extremely easy."
Informatica Introduces Data Replication Solutions to Support Big Transaction Data
Expanding its existing product portfolio, Informatica Corporation now offers Universal Data Replication, giving customers more options to meet their business continuity, big data and operational data integration needs. A part of the Informatica Platform, Informatica's new data replication technology includes Informatica Fast Clone which automates the cloning of application data and Informatica Data Replication which manages the capture, routing and delivery of high-volume transaction data across diverse systems in real time with minimal source system impact.
Popular Presentations from COLLABORATE 11 - OAUG Forum to be Presented in Online Educational Series
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world's largest user knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, is launching the OAUG Educational Series 2011, a virtual learning series offered to OAUG members from Aug. 8-19, featuring the most popular presentations from the COLLABORATE 11 - OAUG Forum.
Don't Equate Dimensions with Look-Up Tables
Naïve approaches to business intelligence will occasionally trap designers as they juggle operational data stores and data warehouses. The trap results from an honest endeavor to simplify designs and increase consistency throughout the solution. Under the umbrella of consistency a designer may plan for a reference table used for operational look-ups to perform a second service as a star schema dimensional table. Some or all reference tables then are declared by fiat to also be dimensions. While on a superficial level there are similarities between dimension tables and more normalized look up or reference tables, fundamentally these two concepts are separate things.
Closing the IT Skills Gap - Latest SHARE Survey Finds Employers Wanting for Both Business and Specialized Skills in IT Graduates
As the economy shifts to expansion mode, and businesses start hiring again, a familiar challenge is rearing its head. Companies are scrambling to find the talent needed to effectively run, maintain, and expand their technology platforms. This is not a new problem by any means, but this time around, it is taking on a greater urgency, as just about every organization relies on information technology to be competitive and responsive to growth opportunities. A new survey of 376 employers finds a majority depend on the educational sector - universities and colleges - to provide key IT skills, often in conjunction with their own internal training efforts. However, few of the executives and managers hiring out of colleges are entirely satisfied with the readiness of graduates.
Media Services Group Partners with Entrinsik to Offer Customers Informer
Media Services Group (MSGL) a developer of integrated publishing and event management software, has formed a partnership with Entrinsik to offer MSGL clients Informer Web Reporting, Entrinsik's web-based reporting and analysis solution.
Kognitio Announces New Family of Data Warehouse Appliances
Kognitio today launched a new family of data warehouse appliances designed to let companies choose the model best suited to their specific data analysis speed and volume needs. "We have always offered a software-only database prepackaged on industry-standard hardware as an appliance for a turnkey solution. What we are doing today is basically giving customers more choice," Sean Jackson, vice president of marketing, Kognitio, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Kognitio has named the three new appliance varieties Rapids, Rivers and Lakes - which the company says are metaphors for the variety of performance and capacity issues that customers must consider.
Vertica Advances Big Data Analytics with Vertica 5.0
Vertica, an HP company, has announced the availability of Vertica 5.0, the latest version of the MPP columnar Vertica Analytics Platform. Vertica 5.0 offers a new software development kit (SDK) that provides the ability to customize and insert customer- and use case-specific query logic into the Vertica database for fully parallel execution. "The three tenets of Vertica have been its speed, scalability and simplicity and we have continued to further the industry-leading aspects of all three of those tenets of the system," Scott Howser, vice president of product marketing, HP Vertica, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Pentaho Updates BI Tool with Greater Visualization
Pentaho, a provider of business intelligence software, announced a new release of its business intelligence toolset that incorporates interactive reporting and enhanced visualizations for business end users. Pentaho BI 4 Enterprise Edition includes an interactive, web-based report designer that provides more intuitive report-building capabilities for non-technical business users to serve their own reporting requirements without relying on IT. Pentaho BI 4 also includes a new visual interface designed to make BI more appealing and consumable by all users from developers, to power users, to non-technical business users. To a large extent, Pentaho BI 4 functions as an enterprise data mash-up tool, but with greater front-end capabilities, Ian Fyfe, chief technology evangelist for Pentaho, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
IBM Expands Big Data Analytics Portfolio with New Netezza High Capacity Appliance
Representing a continued expansion of its big data analytics portfolio, IBM has introduced a new addition to the Netezza product family of analytics appliances that is designed to help organizations uncover patterns and trends from extremely large data sets. The appliance is the first to be delivered by IBM since it acquired Netezza in November 2010. According to IBM, using the new appliance, businesses can now more easily sift through petabytes of data, including banking and mobile phone transactions, insurance claims, electronic medical records, and sales information, and they can also analyze this information to reveal new trends on consumer sentiment, product safety, and sales and marketing effectiveness. "This new appliance takes the scalability to a completely new dimension," says Razi Raziuddin, senior director of product management at IBM Netezza.
EMC to Deliver Hadoop 'Big Data' Analytics Appliance
EMC Corporation, a provider of storage and infrastructure solutions, announced it will be shipping a data warehouse appliance that leverages the Apache Hadoop open-source software used for data-intensive distributed applications. The company's high-performance, data co-processing Hadoop appliance - the Greenplum HD Data Computing Appliance - integrates Hadoop with the EMC Greenplum Database, allowing the co-processing of both structured and unstructured data within a single solution. EMC also says the solution will run either Hadoop-based EMC Greenplum HD Community Edition or EMC Greenplum HD Enterprise Edition software.
Composite Software Releases Latest Data Virtualization Software Featuring "Big Data" Integration Support for Apache Hadoop, IBM Netezza and HP Vertica
Composite Software has introduced Composite 6, a new version of its flagship data virtualization software that provides "big data" integration support for the Cloudera Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH), IBM Netezza and HP Vertica data sources. In addition, Composite 6, which is now completing beta test and will be commercially available in July, includes performance optimizations, cache enhancements, new data governance capabilities and ease-of-use features. "Data virtualization is emerging as an ideal solution for managing today's complex data integration challenges," says Jim Green, CEO for Composite Software.
HP Unveils Performance Suite to Improve IT Performance
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.
New Release of OpenText Integration Center Helps Customers Leverage Structured and Unstructured Content
OpenText has announced the release of a new version of OpenText Integration Center featuring an enhanced, native connector to OpenText ECM Suite 2010. Helping customers better leverage their structured and unstructured content, OpenText Integration Center unifies access to multiple sources of disparate information from OpenText ECM Suite for applications such as business systems integration, legacy decommissioning, in-place content management and content migration. OpenText Information Center 8.0 inherently understands both the unstructured world and the unstructured world to bring together information for a complete view of the business, Janet Luisser, senior program manager, connectivity, at OpenText, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Big Data: The Time is Now for Managing It and Leveraging the Advantages
Is the day of reckoning for big data upon us? To many observers, the growth in data is nothing short of incomprehensible. Data is streaming into, out of, and through enterprises from a dizzying array of sources-transactions, remote devices, partner sites, websites, and nonstop user-generated content. Not only are the data stores resulting from this information driving databases to scale into the terabyte and petabyte range, but they occur in an unfathomable range of formats as well, from traditional structured, relational data to message documents, graphics, videos, and audio files.
ParAccel Extends Analytics to Unstructured Data
ParAccel, Inc., an analytic platform provider, announced the latest version of its flagship technology which introduces analytic integration for a wide range of analytic tools and data sources. ParAccel Analytic Database 3.1 (PADB 3.1) enables organizations to combine all internal and external data sources, both structured and unstructured, into analysis work."Analytic integration delivers new applications and analytic capabilities to our customers," says Tarun Loomba, chief marketing officer of ParAccel, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
R&R Insurance Services Selects Entrinsik's Informer
Entrinsik has announced that R&R Insurance Services, one of the largest independently owned insurance agencies in the Midwest, has selected Informer. R&R was struggling to extract information and capture specific data within their AMS360 database. It needed a reporting solution that would allow it to create, save and distribute custom reports without the need to continually recreate the reports from scratch.
Infobright 4.0 with DomainExpert Advances Web and Machine-Generated Data Analytics
Infobright has announced Infobright 4.0, a database with built-in intelligence for fast analysis of machine-generated data, including sources ranging from web, network and computer logs, to data from online gaming, social networks, sensors, satellites, and financial transaction feeds. Infobright is focused on providing an analytics database that is optimized for machine-generated data, and in most cases, users are seeking almost real-time access to the data to slice and dice it, as opposed to end-of-day reporting, Susan Davis, vice president of product management and marketing, tells 5 Minute Briefing. Machine-generated data which is being created 24x7 not only represents the fastest-growing category of big data, but it also represents great potential value to customers as well, says Davis.
CiRBA Introduces Analytics for Migrating Infrastructure to Clouds
CiRBA Inc., a provider of data center analytics software, says it will soon be offering new cloud planning analytics that streamline and improve decision-making processes around cloud migration. To be made available with CiRBA Version 6.2, these new analytics will help support organizations in determining how to set up their internal cloud environments, as well as determine the optimal environment, placement, instance size and software profile to migrate individual workloads to."Cloud migration planning can be far more complex than pure virtualization planning, partly due to the added variables of instance sizing and costs, but primarily because policies take on an even more critical role in the decision of where to place workloads," says Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of CiRBA.
Fundamental System Troubleshooting Information
One of the things I repeatedly encounter when speaking to database professionals working with Microsoft SQL Server is that many of them simply don't know about some of the most elementary and fundamental means of investigating SQL Server performance. For example, I recently created a popular poster for Quest Software that shows all of the most meaningful and useful Windows Performance Monitor (PerfMon) counters. Now friends, PerfMon has been with us since Windows NT Server, and yet, PerfMon counters are a mystery to at least half of the DBAs I meet. Half!
Ingres Launches Cloud-Based Interactive Reporting and Analysis Service
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.
Composite Information Server is Certified with MicroStrategy 9 Business Intelligence Platform
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.
Oracle Introduces Oracle Retail Merchandising Analytics
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.
Industry Leader Q&A with Oracle's Tim Shetler - The Oracle Exadata Database Machine Explained
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.
SAP ERP to be First Business Suite Application to Run on Sybase ASE
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.
Sybase Announces New Version of CEP Platform - Sybase ESP
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.
Update on TechWave 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.
HP Announces New Financing Offer for SAP HANA Running on HP Converged Infrastructure
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.
PASS Summit Goes to Charlotte, NC, in 2013
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.
Registration Now Open for OAUG Connection Point—EPM/BI in Seattle
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.
Alpine Data Labs Raises $7.5 Million in Series A Funding and Formally Launches in the U.S.
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.
Cost-Effective Big Data Retention Enables Better Analytics
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.
The Rise of the Data Scientist
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.
Oracle Introduces New Releases of BI Products
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.
ActiveBatch Job Scheduling and Workload Automation Receives the Informatica Seal of Approval
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.