Breaking News - IBM Announces IBM solidDB In-Memory Database
At its Information On-Demand conference in The Hague today, IBM announced the availability of IBM solidDB, an in-memory relational database software that delivers performance-critical data up to 10 times faster than conventional database software. The new release is the first since IBM acquired Solid Information Technology around six months ago.
IBM solidDB keeps data in main memory at all times, making it an order of magnitude faster than databases that store data on disk. In addition to serving as a standalone in-memory database, solidDB can be deployed as a cache to the entire family of IBM DB2 data servers, including IBM’s mainframe DB2 technology as well as the Informix Dynamic Server (IDS), allowing applications to quickly access performance-critical data using the familiar SQL programming language. “This is quite an achievement,” Paola Lubet, IBM’s director of product marketing for the IBM solidDB, told 5 Minute Briefing in an exclusive interview. “The acquisition only closed in January and we have been amazed at how fast the integration has taken place. There is good synergy.”
The solidDB architecture can support tens of thousands of transactions per second with predictable response times measured in microseconds. solidDB’s extreme speed is a vital resource for clients in many industries, such as ticketing and reservation service providers, Web retailers, telecommunications companies and capital market firms which require instant and reliable handling of dynamic business information. Data from DB2 or IDS can be cached in solidDB to support peak workloads experienced by such applications as Web collaboration, online mobile phone charging and stock trading. This fast access to information can also provide Web retailers with the ability to personalize their sites for targeted audiences and maximize up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
“There is a new breed of applications that need instant access to data,” Lubet said. “They need caching of dynamic data. The market for speed is emerging.” Being a part of IBM’s enterprise channel allows the in-memory technology to be used to address a wider array of applications, she added. IBM solidDB represents the first in-memory software technology to be integrated in the Information on Demand portfolio. IBM solidDB, solidDB Cache for IDS and solidDB Cache for DB2 will be available starting June 24. For more on IBM solidDB, go here.
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Noetix Provides Oracle Discoverer Customers with Advanced Integration Alternatives
Noetix Corp., a software provider that automatically generates business intelligence (BI) content from enterprise applications, has introduced Noetix Generator for Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition, the newest member of its generator line of products for BI platforms including Business Objects, Cognos and Oracle.
“The users of Oracle's new BI suite, Oracle BI Enterprise Edition, need to get access to the data that's in the Oracle E-Business Suite and in PeopleSoft Enterprise. And to do that, they need to create an enterprise information model, the metadata model that OBIEE requires, and doing that manually is a very tedious, difficult task,” Daryl Orts, vice president of engineering technologies, Noetix, told 5 Minute Briefing. “We have a history of BI success in the Oracle E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft market. Our flagship product, NoetixViews, provides access to that information and now, with this new Generator, that information is available to users of OBIEE.”
Noetix also unvveiled Noetix Migration Services, a combination of technology and services intended to provide a cost-effective method for migrating from Oracle Discoverer to leading BI platforms. With Noetix's broad platform support for Business Objects, Cognos and Oracle, customers who use Oracle Discoverer have a range of choices when planning their future BI initiatives, according to Noetix.
Oracle has announced its plan to de-support Oracle Discoverer and to migrate all of their Discoverer customers to OBIEE, Orts explained. “As a result, customers who have a large library of reports in Discoverer need some assistance and some plan for how they are going to migrate their BI environment from Discoverer to this new BI platform. Our services organization has some best practices plus technology to help them make that transition,” said Orts.
Critical to the Noetix approach is NoetixViews for Oracle E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft, which provide “an unrivaled level of access to the information that's in those enterprise systems,” said Orts. “Taking that and making it available to customers with OBIEE is unmatched by competitive solutions - including that from Oracle,” he said. “The solution from Oracle is very much focused on creating a data warehouse and providing metrics and analytics through that data warehouse. Our solution focuses on operational reporting and real-time access to the data that is in their enterprise applications.”
Noetix Generator for Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition will be generally available at the end of June. Noetix Migration Services are available now. For more information, go here.
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Panorama Software Announces Analytics as a Cloud-Computing Service
Panorama Software, a provider of what it calls proactive business intelligence solutions, has announced a cloud computing analytical engine for business intelligence (BI) applications. Through what the company is calling its PowerApps strategy, ISVs and software developers can now take advantage of the first “Analytics as a Service” platform to develop and extend various analytical applications using the power of cloud computing.
PowerApps is a Web-based, hosted OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing) platform that can create, manage and support any type of analysis scenario. The platform offers APIs to create OLAP cubes as well as to deliver and create customized, user-facing reports from within Google Apps. “This is an extension and the enabler of our Google strategy,” Oudi Antebi, vice president of marketing and strategy for Panorama Software, told 5 Minute Briefing. In creating technology to integrate analytics into Google applications, giving the Google spreadsheet the same kind of functionality as Microsoft Excel, for example, Panorama realized that it could not tap into the power of desktop analysis. So it created PowerApps.
Panorama’s PowerApps uses industry standards to create and access data. As such, Multidimensional Expression (MDX) will be the way to query the data once hosted, and new tools will enable easy data upload and cube creation and management. As a default front end, Panorama will offer ways to customize its solution for Google Apps; however, any MDX-supporting front end application will be able to query data sitting on PowerApps, including Excel.
Ten years ago, Panorama developed the OLAP technology that became the foundation of SQL Server Analysis Services. According to Antebi, this is the next big step. “It changes everything. What the Google BigTable distributed storage system and Amazon S3 are for transactions, PowerApps is for analytics. Now we are building the next generation of OLAP solutions for the new era of cloud computing,” Antebi said.
PowerApps is currently in private beta. A public beta will be launched within a couple of months, Antebi said, with a commercial offering to follow. For more information, go here.
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Boomi and StrikeIron Partner to Integrate Web Services
Boomi, a leader in providing on-demand integration, and StrikeIron, which provides innovative solutions for delivering data over the Internet, have inked a partnership to enable the seamless integration of StrikeIron’s Marketplace Web services into the Boomi on Demand SaaS integration platform. Boomi users can now integrate the full spectrum of business intelligence, CRM, e-commerce and financial solutions that StrikeIron offers with no additional coding required.
Boomi on Demand can integrate applications SaaS applications running in the data cloud with on-premise applications running behind a firewall,” Rick Nucci, Boomi’s co-founder and CTO, told 5 Minute Briefing. “We are EAI 2.0.” Once integration processes are built, they are deployed via a lightweight, dynamic runtime engine called an “Atom.” Built with patent-pending technology, Boomi Atoms contain all the components required to execute an integration process from end-to-end including connectors, transformation rules, decision handling and processing logic. Boomi Atoms are completely self-contained and autonomous and can be run on virtually any server. They can be hosted for SaaS-to-SaaS integration or downloaded behind a company’s firewall.
The StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace provides over 100 data services from leading technology suppliers, including Cortera, D&B, Gale, MapQuest, Wall Street Horizon, and Zacks. Using the Internet as a platform, StrikeIron supplies business users and enterprises with a single location for accessing quality data for seamless integration into any application, mashup platform, product or Web site.
By partnering with StrikeIron, “we enable a new class of users to tap into Web services,” Nucci said. “We are adding new value by offering data as a service. You can do things that you couldn’t do before the integration.” Through the integration with StrikeIron, users can tap into 2000 Web services in a drag and drop manners, Nucci noted. “We want to provide as much capability to our class of user and this capability is significant.” For more information about Boomi, go here.
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Apatar Unveils Connectors for IBM DB2
Apatar, a provider of open source data integration tools, has debuted connectors for IBM DB2 for Linux, Unix and Windows and the mainframe. The new connector for the Apatar Open Source Data Integration toolset allows reading and writing of data from/to DB2 tables and improves the quality of data during migration or integration, all without custom coding. With this new release, Apatar enables both developers and users to easily link DB2 information between third-party applications like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, other databases including Oracle, Microsoft SQL, and MySQL, flat files like CSV and TXT), and the top Web 2.0 destinations such as Flickr, Amazon S3, RSS feeds.
“DB2 is used for many, perhaps the majority, of data-intensive legacy applications,” Renat Khasanshyn, Apatar’s founder and CEO, told 5 Minute Briefing. “But the emergence of on-demand applications such as Salesforce calls for integration beyond one-time extracts. With this new solution embedded into the visual Apatar application, migration from legacy systems can be performed by drag-and-drop even by business users.”
According to Khasanshyn, the connector was developed initially for a single client. But as the company saw demand for the connector grow on user forums, it decided to finalize development and offer support for the connector. “This is an important step forward,” Khasanshyn said. “Because of the importance of the data they have, legacy applications and databases can drive the use of open source data integration tools.” Apatar plans to build out its family of DB2 connectors as demand grows. For Apatar’s Connector for IBM DB2 user guide, go here. For a free download of Apatar’s data integration toolset, go here.
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