Tech 10: The Big Data Software Boom

The Booming Big Data Market

The worldwide business intelligence and analytics technology market is forecast to reach $16.9 billion this year, up 5.2 percent from 2015, according to Gartner. That growth comes as the market is in the final stages of a shift from IT-led reporting BI tools to business-led, self-service analytics.

There's been an explosion of big data software from startups and established vendors alike that provide new ways to collect, prepare, manage and analyze the increasingly huge volumes of data that businesses are struggling with today.

Here are 10 recently announced new and upgraded big data software products that the channel should be aware of.

10. Trifacta v4

Trifacta develops 'data wrangling' software used to transform and enrich raw, complex data into clean, structured data for analysis. The new release provides expanded support for cloud deployments and cloud data source connectivity through integrations with Amazon Web Services (including Amazon S3 and Redshift for input and EC2 for deployment), Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. Trifacta v4 offers improved performance and scale, including an optimized in-memory data processing engine for data sets that don't require parallel processing.

9. Teradata Everywhere

Data warehouse system developer Teradata unveiled Teradata Everywhere, a series of new deployment options for the company's massively parallel processing analytic database. The database now runs in on-premise, private and public cloud environments, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Teradata Managed Cloud, VMware virtualization software and the Teradata IntelliFlex platform.

8. Tableau 10

Tableau 10 adds new analytical and mobile capabilities and more data preparation options. The latter includes a cross-database feature for bringing together disparate data sources at the row level. The release offers new features and functions to boost its appeal for enterprise use, including tools for IT administrators to manage Tableau Server deployments, gain better visibility into the usage of Tableau Desktop licenses, and control user logins for multitenant deployments.

7. StreamSets Dataflow Performance Manager

StreamSets develops software that organizations use to manage dataflows for applications, business analytics and other tasks. The new Dataflow Performance Manager software provides a consolidated view of end-to-end dataflow operations, helping companies map and measure dataflow topologies for key IT initiatives such as data lakes, customer 360 analysis, Internet of Things projects and cybersecurity efforts.

6. SAP BW/4HANA

SAP is shipping BW/4HANA, the next generation of its Business Warehouse software specifically designed to run on the vendor's HANA in-memory database system. BW/4HANA works with data that companies have stored in multiple locations, including in on-premise and cloud systems. BW/4HANA can "consume" data warehouse objects in the SAP BusinessObjects Cloud and has built-in connectivity to the SAP Digital Boardroom portal.

5. Paxata Connect

Paxata, a developer of self-service data preparation software, now offers Paxata Connect, a connectivity framework that helps businesses source, shape and publish data across on-premise, cloud and hybrid systems and big data environments. Connect includes out-of-the-box connectors, an SDK for custom connectors, algorithms and scripts. Connect allows faster deployment of data services and pipelines to any source, providing transparent oversight of data acquisition, interaction and publishing tasks.

4. Maana Winter '17 Knowledge Platform

The Maana Knowledge Platform operationalizes big data insights into line-of-business applications, helping businesses increase profitability through asset and process optimization. The technology, including the Knowledge Graph engine, discovers the dynamic relationships between data and provides a holistic view of the assets or processes a business wants to optimize. The new release includes Knowledge Applications for optimizing business processes or performing predictive maintenance; and Knowledge Assistants for creating new iterative models such as time-series analysis.

3. Hortonworks Data Platform 2.5

Hortonworks is now shipping Hortonworks Data Platform 2.5, the latest release of the Hadoop-based software with a broad range of enhancements spanning data science and data access, security and governance. HDP 2.5 integrates Apache Atlas and Apache Ranger for dynamic classification-based security and data governance, while inclusion of the latest Apache Ambari technology makes it easier to install, securely configure, manage and maintain HDP.

2. Datawatch Monarch 13.5

Monarch 13.5 is the latest edition of Datawatch's self-service data preparation software that helps data analysts and business users mine data from virtually any source and manipulate, blend, enrich and prepare it for use with analytics tools and operational applications. The 13.5 edition is integrated with Microsoft Power BI and accesses Google Analytics and Salesforce.com reports as data sources.

1. ClustrixDB 8.0

ClustrixDB is a scale-out database designed for high-transaction, high-value web application workloads and is targeted as a replacement for MySQL database installations. ClusterixDB 8.0 offers a 3X in-memory processing performance gain for bulk data ingest and streaming HTAP tasks. The software is fully containerized for easy installation and deployment.