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Business Intelligence and Analytics

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

XtremeData, a provider of large data analytics and complex computing solutions, showcased the dbX 100 Series of desk-side analytical data warehouse appliances at TDWI in Chicago. Leveraging the Cray CX1 desk-side supercomputer, the new product line is intended to provide super computing price/performance for business intelligence (BI) analysts and statistical researchers in an affordable departmental-sized system package. Designed specifically for the unconstrained analysis and exploration of large data sets, the dbX family of appliances is unique among competing products in leveraging the best of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Linux server offerings, while seamlessly integrating SQL acceleration, according to XtremeData.

Posted May 25, 2010

Sybase has announced the upcoming general availability of Sybase IQ 15.2, the latest version of the analytics server. With full text search, query federation and web-enabled analytics, IQ 15.2 delivers faster and consistently more accurate business answers and reporting by turning raw data into actionable information through analytics.

Posted May 25, 2010

Simba Technologies Inc., a provider of standards-based data access products, solutions and services for both relational and multi-dimensional data sources, has announced that Oracle's Technology Network has released an Oracle By Example (OBE) tutorial covering how to use Microsoft Excel 2007 with Oracle 11g OLAP data for easy and powerful ad hoc query, analysis and reporting. The direct Excel to Oracle connectivity is made possible by Simba's MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP data connectivity product.

Posted May 20, 2010

EMC Corporation and Informatica Corporation have announced that Informatica Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Master Data Management (MDM) solutions have been added to EMC Select. Under this agreement, EMC will resell Informatica ILM and MDM products and services, to further extend the value of EMC's intelligent tiered storage, archive and enterprise content management platforms.

Posted May 18, 2010

SAP and Sybase, Inc. have announced that SAP's subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Sybase, in a transaction that will bring them together to enable companies to become better-run "unwired enterprises." The planned transaction is expected to close in July 2010, and, according to the companies, Sybase, based in Dublin, Calif., will be run as a standalone company under the name "Sybase an SAP company."

Posted May 18, 2010

Microsoft last week announced that volume licensing downloads for SQL Server 2008 R2 are available in all languages, including the public availability of PowerPivot functionality. Customers can now download the trial version of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 and the web downloads of PowerPivot for Excel and SharePoint.

Posted May 18, 2010

SAP and Sybase, Inc. announced Wednesday afternoon that SAP's subsidiary, SAP America, Inc., has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Sybase for approximately $5.8 billion, in a transaction that will bring the companies together to enable customers to become better-run "unwired enterprises." The transaction is expected to close in July 2010, and Sybase will be run as a standalone company. "This is a strategic moment for SAP, for Sybase, our customers, and the IT industry," said Bill McDermott, co-CEO of SAP and a member of the SAP executive board, in a conference call for analyst and the press. "This acquisition is about accelerating growth for both businesses. This transaction is fully aligned with our strategic objectives to significantly expand our addressable market, opening up new opportunities in mobility, in-memory computing, and analytics."

Posted May 13, 2010

IBM Offers Linux Webcasts On-Demand Did you miss a webcast covering important information about technologies you need to learn more about? IBM offers replays on-demand of webcasts presented by IBM experts and partners.For a replay of "Discover the Benefits of Running Your WebSphere Workloads on Linux and System z" go here.For a replay of "Cloud Computing Made Easy with IBM and Linux," go here. For a replay on "System z and Linux: The Winning Combination," go here. For a replay on "Leveraging Linux with the IBM Client for Smart Work," go here.For a replay on "IBM Smart Business Development and Test with Linux on the Cloud," go here.

Posted May 12, 2010

Ingres Corporation, an open source database management company, has entered into a strategic agreement with Bendigo Partners, LLC to promote the use of Ingres VectorWise within the financial services industry. Bendigo Partners focuses on investment and operating partner opportunities in global, technology-driven financial services. It supports product expansion, global expansion, acquisitions, or technology and operational efficiencies with both capital and expertise.

Posted May 11, 2010

Altova recently announced the availability of Version 2010 Release 3 (v2010r3) of the Altova MissionKit, an integrated suite of XML, database, and UML tools. This latest release provides a range of usability and performance enhancements as well as integration with Visual Studio 2010 and support for industry standards such as iXBRL and National Information Exchange Model (NIEM).

Posted May 11, 2010

You're probably familiar with the old saying that "it's not what you know, it's who you know." That may have been true back in the days when conversations about competitive advantage concerned memberships at prestigious golf clubs and lavish expense accounts; in the days when data was regarded as mere records of transactions, production and inventory levels. Today's conversations about competitive advantage may still include talk of personal relationships. More frequently, though, these conversations reflect the relatively recent appreciation of the intrinsic value of enterprise data - a value seen not just by senior executives, but also by employees in virtually every department. There is broad consensus in most organizations that enterprise data, and perhaps more importantly, the ability to analyze large volumes or smaller subsets of data at will, in real time, are crucial business differentiators.

Posted May 10, 2010

Application monitoring started off with a simple need - to help an administrator or manager of an application, monitor and manage its performance. It was narrow in scope and limited in use - to monitor a single application and provide metrics useful for managing that application only. Monitoring tools were often provided by application vendors, but the growing and complex nature of IT environments necessitated the entry of third-party monitoring tools. These were more specialized, with the ability to centrally monitor several different applications. They helped administrators gain visibility across several different applications, understand where problems occurred, and helped to quickly resolve them.

Posted May 10, 2010

Have you heard about stream computing? Basically, it involves the ingestion of data - structured or unstructured - from arbitrary sources and the processing of it without necessarily persisting it. Any digitized data is fair game for stream computing. As the data streams it is analyzed and processed in a problem-specific manner. The "sweet spot" applications for stream computing are situations in which devices produce large amounts of instrumentation data on a regular basis. The data is difficult for humans to interpret easily and is likely to be too voluminous to be stored in a database somewhere. Examples of types of data that are well-suited for stream computing include healthcare, weather, telephony, stock trades, and so on.

Posted May 10, 2010

Oracle president Charles Phillips unveiled Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g during a presentation in the Guggenheim Museum's Peter B. Lewis Theater filled with customers, analysts and the press. "Now that we can instrument the entire stack, because it is our stack, we can do things we couldn't do before," Phillips told the audience. There is value in being able to get a handle on management costs and gain more predictable environments so downtime is not a threat, and integration is not a struggle, he stressed.

Posted May 05, 2010

Composite Software, Inc., a provider of data virtualization middleware, has expanded its federal operations in response to accelerating government agency demand. The company increased its federal team with key new hires in sales, sales engineering, and services, and solidified a new GSA partnership with Carahsoft Technology Corp., a government IT solutions provider, to build upon a second consecutive year of greater than 50% revenue growth.

Posted May 04, 2010

Informatica Corporation has announced new customer support offerings and proactive support capabilities as part of the Informatica Global Customer Support program. The additional services will be bundled into existing programs to further accelerate customer time-to-value, reducing cost-of-ownership and helping ensure ongoing project success.

Posted May 04, 2010

IBM is delivering a portfolio of software appliances across IBM brands, all powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Leveraging the SUSE Appliance Program from Novell, the initiative enables IBM to provide "plug-and-play" appliances that lower the cost and complexity of deploying applications for small and medium-sized businesses and help independent software vendors simplify the packaging of their solutions for multiple environments, enabling them to test, deploy and scale offerings.

Posted May 03, 2010

Sybase reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010. "We are off to a very good start this year," stated John Chen, chairman, CEO and president of Sybase, during a conference call last week. "We are very pleased to report our 10th consecutive record quarter. The highlights include historical first quarter highs in revenue, operating margin, earnings and cash flow. We also have double digit growth in total revenue as well as license growth and message revenue growth."

Posted April 29, 2010

Sybase technical experts are planning a series of Developer Days throughout the United States and Europe to showcase the latest releases of its industry-leading development software. All seminars are free and run from 8:30am - 2pm local time (timing may vary slightly by location) with breakfast and lunch included.

Posted April 29, 2010

Sybase TechWave 2010 will be held August 9-11 at the Hilton Washington, in Washington, DC. Sybase has announced it is planning to expand the event to include another day of technical training.

Posted April 29, 2010

In a presentation to analysts, customers, and the press at the Guggenheim Museum in New York last week, Oracle president Charles Phillips unveiled Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g which is intended to help customers maximize business agility and productivity by providing an integrated approach to IT management. "It's about finally trying to get control of this complex thing called IT — trying to manage the entire stack in a way that is different that is different than we have in the past. We are just now getting to the point in the evolution of the industry and in Oracle's strategy where that is now possible," Phillips said.

Posted April 27, 2010

Microsoft has announced that SQL Server 2008 R2 has been released to manufacturing and customers can expect availability in the next few weeks through Microsoft's distribution channels. According to Microsoft, SQL Server 2008 R2 represents a continued commitment to mission-critical workloads, providing a scalable platform, increased developer and IT efficiency and managed self-service business intelligence.

Posted April 27, 2010

5 Minute Briefing: Information Management visited the COLLABORATE 10 conference for Oracle users last week in Las Vegas and had an opportunity to meet with new Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) president, David Ferguson. The conference, held at the Mandalay Bay convention center in Las Vegas, was jointly sponsored by the OAUG, the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and Quest International Users Group. Attendance was estimated at over 5,000 with excellent attendance at the sessions and brisk exhibit floor activity during the breaks.

Posted April 27, 2010

5 Minute Briefing had an opportunity to meet with CONFIO at last week's COLLABORATE 10 conference in Las Vegas. CONFIO recently launched ignite8, the database performance monitoring tool that supports the four major databases installed: Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2 and Sybase. CONFIO ignite8 has been extensively field tested and uses historical trend data to resolve current database performance problems.

Posted April 27, 2010

Panorama Software, a business intelligence solutions vendor, announced the launch of NovaView for PowerPivot, a business intelligence suite built on top of the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 PowerPivot platform. Microsoft's PowerPivot offers a managed self-service BI capability and in-memory engine.

Posted April 27, 2010

Ingres Corporation, an source database management company, and Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A., a provider of infrastructure software in Italy, have released the SpagoBI Analytical Appliance, a new open source analytical appliance for the business intelligence (BI) market. The SpagoBI Analytical Appliance integrates SpagoBI, an open source suite covering all the analytical areas of business intelligence projects, Ingres Database, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell. The software appliance offers a complete and preconfigured analytical environment, distributed as a virtual machine, and provides the reliability of an enterprise middleware while at the same time improving and simplifying the operating system setup.

Posted April 27, 2010

Demonstrating its continued commitment to lifetime support, new enhancements, and application innovation with the Oracle "Applications Unlimited" program, Oracle recently announced that global customers, including BP America, McDonald's, The Principal Financial Group and Standard Pacific Homes have implemented Oracle Applications.

Posted April 21, 2010

With data volumes and database instances on the rise, organizations are encountering challenges in managing and maintaining their information infrastructure, according to the results of the 2010 IOUG Enterprise Platform Decisions Survey. Participants in the survey acknowledged that steps need to be taken to control the costs and complexity of their data environments while addressing the need for continued growth. The use of advanced virtualization strategies was identified by respondents as a key to better managing these diverse environments.

Posted April 21, 2010

Noetix Corp., a provider of business intelligence (BI) software and services for enterprise applications, this week introduced its newest operational reporting solution for Oracle E-Business Suite, NoetixViews 6.0. This latest release provides new global views for Oracle Financials, U.S. Federal Financials, Supply Chain, Discrete Manufacturing, Projects, and Enterprise Asset Management, joining the previously released global views for Oracle's Human Resource Management System (HRMS) applications.

Posted April 21, 2010

As part of a strategy to help customers better understand, control and monetize their content, Open Text Corporation, a provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, said it plans to integrate and expand the content analytics capabilities of Nstein Technologies in the Open Text ECM Suite. Open Text Corporation acquired Nstein Technologies April 1.

Posted April 21, 2010

Ingres Corporation, an source database management company, and Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A., a provider of infrastructure software in Italy, have released the SpagoBI Analytical Appliance, a new open source analytical appliance for the business intelligence (BI) market. The SpagoBI Analytical Appliance integrates SpagoBI, an open source suite covering all the analytical areas of business intelligence projects, Ingres Database, and SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell. The software appliance offers a complete and preconfigured analytical environment, distributed as a virtual machine, and provides the reliability of an enterprise middleware while at the same time improving and simplifying the operating system setup.

Posted April 20, 2010

Netezza Corporation, a provider of data warehouse, analytic and monitoring appliances, and Composite Software, a data virtualization middleware provider, are working together on data federation offerings that simplify, accelerate and optimize integration of enterprise data stored on Netezza's TwinFin appliances and other data sources.

Posted April 20, 2010

expressor software, which targets departmental data integration projects in global 2000 and mid-market organizations, has introduced version 2.2 of the expressor semantic data integration system, which features enhanced semantic rationalization and team development capabilities, additional database connectivity and expanded Microsoft platform support.

Posted April 20, 2010

As part of a strategy to help customers better understand, control and monetize their content, Open Text Corporation, a provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, said it plans to integrate and expand the content analytics capabilities of Nstein Technologies in the Open Text ECM Suite. Open Text Corporation acquired Nstein Technologies April 1.

Posted April 20, 2010

IBM has announced new systems highly-tuned and optimized to help clients more quickly draw insights from vast amounts of data so they can anticipate emerging business trends, capture new opportunities and avoid risks.

Posted April 19, 2010

IBM has announced new systems highly-tuned and optimized to help clients more quickly draw insights from vast amounts of data so they can anticipate emerging business trends, capture new opportunities and avoid risks. "We are looking to help our clients reduce costs and achieve better value faster. It is both of those pieces that make the notion of workload optimized systems compelling for our clients these days," states Bernie Spang, IBM's director of strategy and marketing for information management software.

Posted April 14, 2010

Holland Hospital, a 209-bed hospital in Western Michigan that is nationally recognized for quality practices and exceptional patient care, is implementing the InterSystems Ensemble rapid integration and development platform as its enterprise integration engine. Holland Hospital chose Ensemble to address several integration challenges such as the need to interconnect more systems across the hospital and to integrate with electronic medical record (EMR) systems at affiliated physician groups. Ensemble, which is used to develop and integrate mission-critical applications, leverage previous software investments through composite applications, and establish an enterprise service bus or SOA infrastructure, offered significant advantages over Holland Hospital's legacy integration platform.

Posted April 13, 2010

The Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), has announced the availability of a virtual educational program that will run concurrently with the annual Oracle users event COLLABORATE. Presented jointly by the IOUG, as well as the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International Users Group (Quest), the COLLABORATE 10 conference will take place April 18-22 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center in Las Vegas.

Posted April 13, 2010

Spreadsheets, which have long been a disruptive force to enterprise IT, to some extent are the "killer" applications that helped drive the adoption of personal computers (PCs) in the enterprise. Spreadsheet products such as Lotus 1,2,3 - and early versions of Excel on the Mac - saw rapid adoption by business users. Inevitably, these users pushed the boundaries of the spreadsheet model, using spreadsheets as databases, and even to develop simple business applications. In the late 1980s, it was typical to see corporate IT rolling out massively expensive mainframe-based solutions, while departmental users got their real work done on spreadsheets running on cheap PCs.

Posted April 07, 2010

In a presentation titled, "OpenInsight 9.2 Features and Functionality: An Overview," Mike Ruane, president and CEO, Revelation Software, will provide insight into the many new features and enhancements in OpenInsight version 9.2. Attendees to this session will be given a brief overview and demonstration of many of the new features and functionality in OpenInsight 9.2.

Posted April 07, 2010

The Rocket U2 team has set the dates for U2 University. The U.S. event will be November 9-11, 2010, in Denver, Colo. The U.K. and Australia events have been scheduled for the first quarter of 2011.

Posted April 07, 2010

Entrinsik Inc., a provider of operational reporting and analysis solutions, will present at this year's SugarCon event in San Francisco, being held April 12-14. SugarCon 2010, SugarCRM's fourth annual user and customer conference, brings together SugarCRM users, developers, partners and industry experts from around the world.

Posted April 07, 2010

COLLABORATE 10 will at long last bring together Sun and Oracle users for the first time under one roof. Ian Abramson, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, talks with DBTA about what the group is planning for the April conference in Las Vegas, and how the integration of customers and technology is being handled by Oracle and the IOUG.

Posted April 07, 2010

Oracle today announced the latest release of its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System, Release 11.1.2. As part of the 11.1.2 release, there are three new applications: two in the financial close and financial reporting area, Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management, Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management, and a third application that is a purpose-built planning module for public sector organizations called Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting, Hari Sankar, vice president of EPM Product Management, Oracle, tells 5 Minute Briefing. There are also significant enhancements to the existing portfolio of Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management applications such as Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Management, Hyperion Data Relationship Management, Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, as well as Oracle Essbase.

Posted April 07, 2010

To help organizations chart the most efficient course to maximize the enterprise value of investments such as capital projects, software and systems development, new acquisitions and products, Oracle yesterday announced the availability of Oracle's Primavera Portfolio Management 8.

Posted April 07, 2010

Today Informatica Corporation announced the availability of a new independent research study entitled "Information, Unplugged: 2009 OAUG ResearchLine Survey on Enterprise Application Information Lifecycle Management." The report details the challenges IT is facing because of the surge in data flowing through today's enterprise applications and databases. "Inadequately managed data growth is fast becoming a problem of epic proportions, with some enterprise applications and databases increasing in size by as much as 50% a year," notes Adam Wilson, general manager, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Informatica.

Posted April 06, 2010

Lyzasoft recently introduced the latest version of its collaborative business intelligence software, Lyza. The version 2.0 release blends business intelligence and Web 2.0 technologies, allowing analytical communities within an enterprise to synthesize data from many sources, visually analyze the data, and socialize their findings among the workgroup - all via an entirely self-serve model.

Posted April 06, 2010

Entrinsik Inc., a provider of operational reporting and analysis solutions, will present at this year's SugarCon event in San Francisco, being held April 12-14. SugarCon 2010, SugarCRM's fourth annual user and customer conference, brings together SugarCRM users, developers, partners and industry experts from around the world.

Posted April 06, 2010

HiT Software, Inc., a provider of data integration, replication and transformation products, has announced that the newest version of DBMoto, its change data capture (CDC) and data replication solution, has been expanded to include multi-server synchronization. In addition, the release also offers a dynamic, configurable GUI (graphical user interface), and provides updates for remote administration and advanced security options, as well as additional database support. DBMoto 7 will be released in the second quarter of 2010.

Posted April 05, 2010

Pentaho Corporation, an open source business intelligence (BI) vendor, today announced a unified extract, transform, and load (ETL), modeling and data visualization integrated development environment (IDE) for BI applications. The solution, Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) 4.0, is part of what the company calls its "Agile BI" initiative, announced in November.

Posted March 30, 2010

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