Mark Smith's Analyst Perspectives

Big data has become a big deal as the technology industry has invested tens of billions of dollars to create the next generation of databases and data processing. After the accompanying flood of new categories and marketing terminology from vendors, most in the IT community are now beginning to understand the potential of big data. Ventana Research thoroughly covered the evolving state of the big data and information optimization sector in 2014 and will continue this research in 2015 and beyond. As it progresses the importance of making big data systems interoperate with existing enterprise and information architecture along with digital transformation strategiesbecomes critical. Done properly companies can take advantage of big data innovations to optimize their established business processes and execute new business strategies. But just deploying big data and applying analytics to understand it is just the beginning. Innovative organizations must go beyond the usual exploratory and root-cause analyses through applied analytic discovery and other techniques. This of course requires them to develop competencies in information management for big data.

Topics: Big Data, MapR, Predictive Analytics, SAP, Human Capital, Mulesoft, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Paxata, SnapLogic, Splunk, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM, Informatica, Information Management, Operational Intelligence, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Datawatch, Dell Boomi, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Management (IM), Information Optimization, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Savi, Sumo Logic, Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Tamr, Trifacta, Strata+Hadoop

I had the pleasure of attending Cloudera’s recent analyst summit. Presenters reviewed the work the company has done since its founding six years ago and outlined its plans to use Hadoop to further empower big data technology to support what I call information optimization. Cloudera’s executive team has the co-founders of Hadoop who worked at Facebook, Oracle and Yahoo when they developed and used Hadoop. Last year they brought in CEO Tom Reilly, who led successful organizations at ArcSight, HP and IBM. Cloudera now has more than 500 employees, 800 partners and 40,000 users trained in its commercial version of Hadoop. The Hadoop technology has brought to the market an integration of computing, memory and disk storage; Cloudera has expanded the capabilities of this open source software for its customers through unique extension and commercialization of open source for enterprise use. The importance of big data is undisputed now: For example, our latest research in big data analytics finds it to be very important in 47 percent of organizations. However, we also find that only 14 percent are very satisfied with their use of big data, so there is plenty of room for improvement. How well Cloudera moves forward this year and next will determine its ability to compete in big data over the next five years.

Topics: Big Data, Teradata, Zoomdata, Business Intelligence, Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Oracle, Hive, Impala, Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Strata+Hadoop

In the realm of technology that matters for business and IT, our firm as part of our responsibility continually assesses the latest technology and how it can impact organizations’ efficiency and effectiveness. Our benchmark research in technology innovation found that 87% of participants indicated the importance of increasing the organization’s value through technology innovation. Every year we take our knowledge from research and technology briefings to focus on our Technology Innovation Awards and determine the vendors and products that have the potential to drive change in the market, the competitiveness of an organization’s business and sometimes just how efficiently a company operates. Our firm believes that Innovation can come from any size technology vendor from the smallest to the largest that are measured on a spectrum of attributes that contribute to the specific impact of the technology.

Topics: Big Data, Datameer, Mobile, Sales, Social Media, Sustainability, Customer, ESRI, Globoforce, GRC, HCM, Kronos, Kyriba, Location Analytics, Marketing, NetBase, Office of Finance, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Overall Operational Leadership, Peoplefluent, Planview, SQLstream, VMWare, VPI, IT Analytics & Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, CIO, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Hortonworks, IBM, Informatica, Information Builders, Information Management, Information Technology, KXEN, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Contact Center, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Datawatch, Financial Management, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Information Optimization, IT Performance Management (ITPM), Johnson Controls Panoptix, Roambi, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Service & Supply Chain, Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Upstream Works, Vertex, Workforce Performance Management (WPM), Xactly

The big-data landscape just got a little more interesting with the release of EMC’s Pivotal HD distribution of Hadoop. Pivotal HD takes Apache Hadoop and extends it with a data loader and command center capabilities to configure, deploy, monitor and manage Hadoop. Pivotal HD, from EMC’s Pivotal Labs division, integrates with Greenplum Database, a massively parallel processing (MPP) database from EMC’s Greenplum division, and uses HDFS as the storage technology. The combination should help sites gain from big data a key part of its value in information optimization.

Topics: Big Data, EMC, MapR, HAWQ, HDFS, Pivotal HD, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Cloudera, Hortonworks, Location Intelligence, Cirro, Hive, Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Tableau Software, Strata+Hadoop

Business is starting to realize that taking advantage of big data is not just technically feasible but affordable by organizations of all sizes. However, as outlined in our agenda on big data and information optimization, the technology must be engineered to the information needs of business. Hortonworks has been steadily advancing its big data technology called Hadoop and contributing its developments back to the Apache Software Foundation for a range of projects. The company performs enterprise-level testing to ensure Hadoop not just operates but scales across operating systems, cloud computing, virtual machines and appliances. Over the last year Hortonworks has released a number of certifications and benchmarks for an enterprise-ready version of Hadoop for which it provides support and services. These are important steps forward in meeting the needs of IT management, which is the audience evaluating big data technologies in 66 percent of organizations according to our big data research.

Topics: Big Data, Microsoft, Talend, Teradata, Simba, Strata Conference, Business Analytics, Cloud Computing, Hortonworks, Informatica, HDP, Hive, Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Tez, Strata+Hadoop

LucidWorks addresses the growing volume of information now being stored in the enterprise and in big data with two products aimed at the enterprise with search technology. Though you may not be familiar with LucidWorks (previously known as Lucid Imagination), the company has for many years contributed to Apache Lucene, an open source search project, and commercialized and supported for it for business.

Topics: Big Data, MapR, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Cloud Computing, Cloudera, Hortonworks, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Information Management (IM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Search, Workforce Performance Management (WPM), Strata+Hadoop

At the recent Teradata’s annual Partners user conference, the company outlined its expanding role as a provider distributed information architecture technology. My colleague Tony Cosentino assessed Teradata’s business analytics and big data strategy, but there is more under the covers in regards to the company’s expanding role for big data and enterprise architectures. Over the last several decades Teradata has been known for providing enterprise data warehouse appliances, such as its unveiling of its new Teradata 2700 data warehouse appliance, which uses the latest multicore Intel processors. Now, as organizations continue to invest in distributed approaches in which they store and utilize data on a range of appliances and through Hadoop-based big data technology, Teradata has begun to provide integration with Hadoop, including a direct connector to it and commercialized versions of it in partnership with Cloudera and Hortonworks.  Earlier this year, for instance, Teradata formed a partnership with Hortonworks that provides a commercialized edition of the open source Hadoop that now is further integrated.

Topics: Big Data, QlikView, SAS, alteryx, Business Analytics, Hortonworks, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Strata+Hadoop

Kognitio has been serving the analytics and data needs of organizations for more than 20 years with an in-memory analytics platform that meets many of the big-data needs of today’s organizations. Kognitio Analytical Platform provides a unique massively parallel processing (MPP) in-memory database that can rapidly load data and calculate analytics; it is available both in an analytical software appliance and via cloud computing.

Topics: Big Data, Data Warehousing, Social Media, alteryx, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Hortonworks, Information Management, Kognitio, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Information Management (IM), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Strata+Hadoop

Hadoop, the big-data technology, has transformed businesses’ ability to cost-effectively store and process large volumes of data for analysis. Numerous companies have invested in supporting Hadoop, and some produce commercial versions of the open source technology. At last year’s Hadoop Summit Hortonworks had just started to establish itself as one of these providers. Now, at the 2012 Hadoop Summit, with a new CEO, Rob Bearden, a new head of marketing, John Kreisa, and other hires, it is moving fast to advance its Hadoop momentum.

Topics: Big Data, Datameer, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Hortonworks, Information Applications (IA), IT Performance Management (ITPM), Teradata Aster, Strata+Hadoop

Using Hadoop just got easier, thanks to Teradata’s introduction of SQL-H, a new query interface to analyze data from Hadoop.  Most Hadoop access methods require preprocessing and staging of data from the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) using technologies such as MapReduce. These approaches require new skills and technologies, introducing more time and costs for users, which offset the benefits of Hadoop, which according to our big data benchmark research include increasing the speed of analysis. Teradata has announced support for SQL-H not only for its own Aster Database 5.0, which it expects to release in the third quarter, but also supporting the commercial version of Hadoop through Hortonworks.

Topics: Big Data, Teradata, SQL-H, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, CIO, Hortonworks, Information Management, Data, Information Management (IM), Strata+Hadoop