All posts by Richard

M&A Activity, Pricing, Retail, Retail Optimization, Return on investment, Revionics

Revionics Acquires Retail Optimization, Inc. to Offer End-to-End Merchandise Optimization Solutions

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Revionics, Inc. and Retail Optimization, Inc., a provider of cloud-based assortment and micro and macro space optimization solutions, today announced that Revionics has acquired Retail Optimization’s business and related assets. This acquisition extends Revionics’ Life Cycle Price Optimization Solutions with the addition of Retail Optimization’s cloud-based Assortment and Micro and Macro Space Optimization Solutions.

The combination of these two solutions brings all the merchandise planning levers – price, promotion, assortment, space – together to deliver the most powerful End-to-End Merchandise Optimization Solution available in today’s market. Together these solutions help retailers breakdown merchandising organizational siloes and improve demand forecasting to better meet shopper needs and ensure retailers have the RIGHT product, price, promotion, placement and space allocation for optimal financial results and improved customer satisfaction and loyalty. Offered on a highly scalable, high performance cloud-based platform, the solutions future-proof retailers from Big Data/Fast Data challenges, while providing speed-to-ROI.

“The key to becoming demand driven lies in the ability to effectively manage the intersection of demand, supply and product,” said Kevin Sterneckert, a Gartner Research Vice President. “Demand-driven retailers gather information at each customer moment of truth, and utilize five interrelated strategies to translate demand insight into effective response and shaping activities, delivering higher return on assets, more inventory turns and greater revenue growth than their peers.”*

The new Revionics products that are now immediately available from the acquisition include:

  • Revionics® Assortment Optimization
  • Revionics® Macro Space Optimization
  • Revionics® Micro Space Optimization

For more information about these new offerings, please visit: www.revionics.com/merchandise-optimization

Retailers are battling intense competition and price-conscious, informed shoppers that rapidly shift their buying behavior. To compete effectively, retailers need to be more responsive to their shoppers’ product needs ensuring their assortments are tailored to the individual store and space, and are on-shelf available. Doubling in the last decade, out-of-stocks have been one of retailers’ largest headaches and profit loss areas, estimated to be a $107B problem in 2012. Studies show that a typical retailer loses 40% of intended purchases when a shopper encounters an out-of-stock, resulting in a 4% yearly revenue loss.**

According to a 2011 RSR Research study, retailers indicated that out-of-stocks remain a top retail challenge. Assortment and space optimization technologies that can effectively provide simultaneous top down/bottom up recommendations are required to enable a shopper-centric merchandising strategy that protects against out-of-stocks while reducing excess inventory and carryings costs. Improving shelf-availability at a lower cost helps to maximize return on inventory and store real estate while improving customer satisfaction.

“This acquisition underscores our commitment to continually innovate with cloud-based solutions focused on addressing retailers’ most critical business challenges,” said Marc Hafner, Revionics’ President and CEO. “Retail Optimization has the same approach we do, which is to incorporate next-generation predictive analytics and demand-based science into our offerings to ensure our customers have best-of-breed solutions that drive a competitive advantage.”

Leveraged and proven by tier one retailers and manufacturers throughout North America, Retail Optimization’s solutions deliver advanced predictive analytics and demand-based science that incorporates macro and micro spatial constraints and tradeoffs into assortment planning and optimization to determine the right product, placement and space allocation at the store/aisle/category/SKU level.

The solutions bring together otherwise separate but critical information in determining an optimal merchandising execution program – shopper demand information, loyalty data, market data, market basket data, store layouts, planograms, business rules and strategy, and financial objectives. Real-time ‘what-if’ scenario planning capabilities allow retailers to compare and contrast the optimized results of different strategies before selecting one for implementation. Using a proprietary simultaneous ‘top down/bottom up’ optimization approach, retailers can now boost productivity of existing shelf space by determining the highest benefit product mix while simultaneously reducing both the out-of-stocks of that product mix and cutting its inventory requirements.

This acquisition is part of Revionics’ master product roadmap and vision to be the first and only vendor that can offer retailers a next-generation, fully integrated end-to-end merchandise optimization solution, which eliminates the remaining siloes in the merchandising organization by infusing price and promotions into the assortment and space decisions. Bringing assortment, space, and pricing together requires two critical integrations – Space-aware Pricing and Price-aware Assortment. Combined with the existing integration available today, Revionics’ integrated end-to-end merchandise optimization will be able to deliver a Coordinated Master Demand Plan.


Actifio, Data management, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity, VMware

Actifio Announces PAS 5.0, Radically Simple Copy Data Management

Actifio today launched PAS 5.0, a major platform upgrade that extends the company’s signature capability – the ability to recover any application instantly for up to 90 percent less total cost of ownership (TCO) – to large scale enterprises and cloud service providers. This new version of its Protection and Availability Storage (PAS) platform – a proven virtualized storage solution with more than 100 users worldwide – addresses more deployment scenarios by delivering new cloud-based services including multi-tenancy, networking optimization and reporting capabilities. It also offers improved workflow to accelerate application development lifecycles, now including Oracle, with efficient self-service database cloning to lower test/development storage costs across large enterprises.

PAS has disrupted the enterprise storage industry by transforming its underlying economics with a purpose-built system optimized for the real driver of today’s data storage explosion: copy data. By focusing on smarter and more efficient copy data management – where it is not unusual for a business to maintain 13-120 redundant copies of production data – Actifio provides faster recovery and more reliable data protection for up to 90 percent less cost than traditional backup and recovery point tools.

“The copy data explosion is creating significant problems for the enterprise and the reason is that a whole slew of traditional, expensive and siloed data backup and recovery applications can’t instantly find, manage and protect ever-increasing data assets,” Ash Ashutosh, founder and CEO of Actifio. “With PAS 5.0, enterprises can create and maintain a single copy of everything in their production environment, eliminating the need for multiple redundant copies. It also recovers data within seconds, which is more important than ever in mission-critical environments.”

Through Actifio’s radical simplification of the copy data management problem, organizations are freed to reinvest dollars often counted in the millions of annually recurring expenses into more strategic IT initiatives driving growth and innovation. PAS users – including Boston University Medical Campus; Audax Group; NaviSite, a Time Warner Cable Company; City of South Portland; and Jones & Bartlett Learning – are already realizing such savings and putting those resources to better use inside their own organizations.

“Finding ways to extend our current IT investments into new areas can make a good technology decision a great technology decision,” said Erik Dubovik, vice president of IT, Audax Group. “This is exactly the case with PAS 5.0 because it lets me simplify copy data management for more of our environment in addition to lowering test and development storage costs by 95 percent.”

“Our work in the fight against disease is essential but it generates unwieldy ‘Big Data’ that’s hard to store, share and protect using conventional tools,” said Dr. John Meyers, assistant professor of medicine and director of technology for the Department of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. “PAS 5.0 will let us recover anything, physical or virtual, across our entire data center – instantly – with a single solution with 80 percent less dedicated backup storage. For us, that will save time, money and trouble – and allow us to focus on the advancement of science.”

This new release coincides with the accelerating worldwide adoption of PAS, which has been installed by hundreds of customers and sold by more than 120 value added resellers worldwide. This momentum has enabled Actifio to double revenues for seven consecutive quarters and expand in key regions across Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Middle East. It has also resulted in tremendous industry-wide acclaim for Actifio, which was recently chosen as one of Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies1 for 2012.

The new PAS 5.0 supports larger deployments and more diverse enterprises while accelerating the test and development process in Oracle environments. Actifio has significantly bolstered the scalability and performance of PAS 5.0 with these powerful new features:

  • 200 percent dedupe capacity increase
  • 2x increase in throughput
  • 10x bandwidth increase with 10GbE
  • 75 percent network bandwidth savings with DeDup Async™ replication
  • Faster on-boarding of remote applications via portable storage
  • Actifio Enterprise Manager – a new software capability that enables
    simple management of large scale PAS deployments

PAS 5.0 gives developers and IT teams copies of production data within minutes to dramatically hasten the arduous testing process. Within Oracle Test and Development environments, PAS 5.0 eliminates more than 95 percent of storage costs by creating multiple copies at a fraction of footprint. Actifio now enables immediate self-service database cloning – taking less than 15 minutes to clone a five terabyte database when it previously took several days using legacy approaches.

For cloud service providers, PAS 5.0 offers a wealth of public and private cloud data management services including backup, remote backup, and test and development. It also provides several new, in-demand features including DeDup Async, secure multi-tenancy and the Actifio Enterprise Reporter.

This new version of PAS now supports a wider variety of environments – including all file system data on Windows and Linux including DAS, NAS and SAN. It provides comprehensive protection and availability for heterogeneous networked and direct-attached server environments, supporting a range of in-band, out-of-band, physical, VMware, structured and unstructured environments.

Additional Multimedia Assets

  • [Video] – Solving
    the Big Data Problem with Actifio
  • [Video] – Boston
    University: Discovering Effective Big Data Management with Actifio
  • [Video] – NaviSite:
    Delivering the Economic Promise of Cloud Backup with Actifio
  • [Video] – Accelerated
    Oracle App Development, Protection & Delivery with Actifio PAS 5.0

PAS 5.0 will be available the week of June 18.  Contact info@actifio.com for more information.


Identity Governance Framework, Identity management, SailPoint AccessIQ, Single sign-on

SailPoint Announces Integrated Cloud Identity Management Solution for the Enterprise

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Recognizing that cloud adoption is making identity management more complex and difficult for the world’s largest companies, SailPoint today announced SailPoint AccessIQ, which integrates cloud access management with rich identity governance and automated provisioning. AccessIQ provides convenient, easy-to-use services such as single sign-on (SSO) and self-service access request, while ensuring that cloud applications are managed within the same identity governance framework used for on-premises applications. Delivered as a cloud service, AccessIQ deploys quickly and allows enterprises to immediately take advantage of convenient cloud access services coupled with improved visibility and oversight over their usage.

“The consumerization of IT has changed business user expectations. They want fast, simple and convenient access to cloud services without being slowed down by IT processes and controls,” said Jackie Gilbert, VP and GM of SailPoint’s Cloud Business Unit. “And, we see a growing trend of ‘bring your own application,’ where workers self-provision cloud applications. Both scenarios make it more difficult to monitor and control when and where users are placing sensitive data in the cloud, which brings a host of security and compliance concerns. IT can’t manage compliance and risk if it doesn’t have visibility into the cloud applications used throughout the enterprise.”

Designed for empowered business users looking for a more flexible and agile way to address business challenges, AccessIQ provides an intuitive, tablet-like interface to deliver services that improve productivity and user satisfaction. AccessIQ includes an intuitive App Launchpad for one-click, single sign-on to cloud applications from any device, step-up authentication options for added security, as well as simple self-service application request capabilities, via an easy-to-use App Store. This empowers business users to safely use cloud applications for business or mixed-use purposes, with approvals and provisioning handled automatically based on organizational roles and security policies.

SailPoint AccessIQ, together with SailPoint IdentityIQTM, offers the richest set of end-to-end controls over cloud applications available today. AccessIQ’s integration with IdentityIQ provides an enterprise-grade governance platform for managing identities and applications in the cloud, with policy, role, and risk models unified with on-premises application identity management. To extend governance to applications outside the control of IT, AccessIQ provides:

  • Full visibility of user sign-on activity and account usage, enabling
    business unit procured applications and SaaS applications procured by
    individuals to be managed as part of an enterprise-wide identity
    governance strategy.
  • A flexible, risk-based approach to cloud application identities so IT
    organizations can tailor how they manage and control those
    applications without locking down the environment and getting in the
    way of the business.
  • Full audit reporting on application usage and “who has access to what”
    to demonstrate compliance and control monthly subscription expenses by
    promptly deprovisioning unused or unauthorized cloud application
    accounts.

SailPoint AccessIQ is a fully hosted, multi-tenant solution that seamlessly and securely integrates with SailPoint IdentityIQ. It will be generally available in Q3 2012 with per-user subscription-based pricing. For more information, visit: www.sailpoint.com/cloud.


Collaboration, Project-Manager, semYOU Cloud Office, Task-Manager, Virtual office

New semYOU Cloud Office Offers 15 Enterprise Apps for Business Productivity, Collaboration

With its new version of the semYOU Cloud Office (www.semyou.com), scheduled to be launched in late May, app computing system semYOU is taking users beyond the hype by offering businesses a comprehensive, flexible cloud-based enterprise office system based on software-as-a-service.

Now businesses that need software for human resources, project, task, scheduling management and more can gain access to required applications by simply pointing and clicking. The new semYOU Cloud Office is a complete software infrastructure for small or large companies that want to be flexible, are working globally and collaborate with different partners worldwide.

“In less than three minutes, a business can make the whole software infrastructure of semYou available for individual users, teams, projects or the whole company, complete with an administration suite for managing users, groups, rights and licenses, security as well as customization,” said Volker Jahns, CEO of semYOU LLC.

The system provides users with 15 enterprise apps such as Task-Manager, Project-Manager, Project-Timer-Recording and more that all users in the Cloud Office may use. The array of applications makes it possible for IT departments to deploy a full software suite for ongoing projects via the cloud without having to change software infrastructure or increase costs.

“The big advantage of implementing a virtual office via semYOU Cloud Office is that you have the ability to be flexible and scalable for each new situation in your business,” said Jahns. “Instead of your being stuck with a rigid system architecture that’s dedicated to specific applications, the new enterprise app idea from semYOU is to enable you to use professional apps for each business case, just when you need them.”

An additional benefit is that users do not have to deal with software installations, downloads or any other changes to their computers.

The semYou enterprise app system is designed as a low-cost model, and businesses can create virtual offices for their teams starting at $15 user/month for a minimum duration of one month. That means if 10 individuals use the system’s applications, the business pays $150 for that month, and users are not restricted to the same app.

“With semYOU, the cloud finally gets a face,” stated Jahns. “We’re demonstrating how the Internet will look tomorrow for business.”


Business Intelligence, Business Processes, Foreclosure, Multiple listing service, Partnerships, Real estate, Real estate broker, Real estate owned

Green River Capital Partners with Realty Pilot To Add Cloud Asset Management

Green River Capital (GRC), a provider of customized REO asset management and loss mitigation services for mortgage servicers, investment firms, credit unions and banking institutions, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Phoenix-based Realty Pilot, a provider of cloud-based real estate solutions.

GRC will integrate Realty Pilot’s technology to enhance the platform used by GRC’s valuation unit, Infinity Valuation Services (IVS). Agents now have access to multiple listing service (MLS) data directly through IVS’s online platform, which automatically populates data input fields with information regarding comparable properties selected by the user.

“This integration significantly improves our agents’ productivity by dramatically reducing data entry when performing valuations,” said Lorenz Schwarz, COO of GRC. “Adopting Realty Pilot’s technology will advance the functionality of our existing systems, providing greater reporting capabilities and improved process transparency. Furthermore, this development allows IVS to streamline operations and expand its valuation product offerings to address the changing needs of our clients and the industry as a whole.”

Realty Pilot provides a broad suite of automated solutions to the real estate market, including integrated nationwide MLS data. IVS provides BPOs and appraisals to the Mortgage and REO industries, tailoring the products to meet each client’s needs.For more information, visit www.greenrivercap.com.


Actuate, Actuate Corporation, Apache Hadoop, Big Data, BIRT Project, Data Mining, Partnerships, Pervasive

Actuate and Pervasive Software Team to Provide Interactive Visualization of Big Data Analytics

 

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Actuate Corporation today announced an alliance with Pervasive Software Inc. that will enable business data analysts to rapidly review, prepare and analyze big data, and display intuitive data visualizations to support users’ ability to make efficient business decisions.

By speeding Big Data-based decision making, powering predictive analytics and decreasing capital and operating costs, ActuateOne and Pervasive RushAnalyzer “will make Big Data analytics and powerful visualizations available to business users in any industry and to the BIRT developer community.”

“Pervasive RushAnalyzer, the first predictive analytics product to run natively on Hadoop, enables users to rapidly transform and analyze terabytes of data on commodity hardware, and ActuateOne provides the advanced visualization capabilities to support insights and more productive conclusions,” said Mike Hoskins, CTO and general manager of Pervasive, Big Data Products and Solutions. “Pervasive’s seamless integration with Actuate, via BIRT, puts advanced Big Data analytic insights and actionable intelligence into the hands of multiple roles within an organization.”

“Big Data analytics has been traditionally been the realm of data scientists,” said Nobby Akiha, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Actuate. “By teaming with Pervasive, we are changing the game to ensure business users are in the driver’s seat to analyze Big Data sources so that they can operationalize and deliver insights to everyday users.”

ActuateOne – an integrated suite of standard and cloud software built around BIRT – enables easy visualization of data trends through customizable BIRT-based dashboards and Google-standard plug-and-play gadgets. Pervasive RushAnalyzer lets data analysts build and deploy predictive analytics solutions on multiple platforms, including Hadoop clusters and high-performance servers, to rapidly discover data patterns, build operational analytics and deliver predictive analytics. The drag-and-drop graphical interface speeds data preparation with direct access to multiple databases and file formats, as well as a prebuilt library of data mining and analytic operators, leading to simpler data manipulation, mining and visualization.


Economic growth, Information technology, Research

Research and Markets: United States Information Technology Report Q2 2012

Research and Markets  has announced the addition of the “United States Information Technology Report Q2 2012″ report to their offering.

Business Monitor International’s United States Information Technology Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, information technology associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on United States’s information technology industry.

USA IT spending is expected to reach US$558bn in 2012, up 5.5%, with BMI upwardly revising its forecast due to macroeconomic factors. Overall moderate growth in budgets is expected in 2012, but much depends on the economic situation. Despite a drive to cut expenses across government, many public sector organisations have appeared willing to continue to spend on IT. US businesses remain cautious, but there is pent-up demand from projects delayed as a result of the economic situation and cloud computing is expected to be increasingly important.

IT vendors will be concerned when it comes to the effect of the ongoing US federal deficit issue and the failure of politicians to agree a deficit reduction programme.The November 2012 elections will also create uncertainty about the trajectory of future government IT spending.

In 2012 there are expected to be many more contracts for provision of cloud services, following contracts awarded in 2011 by the cities of New York and Los Angeles, and the General Services Administration (GSA) of the federal government. The recession may have had a lasting effect on the IT market by encouraging consideration of cloud computing models such as SaaS.

US PC sales are forecast to report single-digit growth in 2012, after an annualised contraction in Q411, closing off a difficult year. The market slowdown was due in part to base effects, but a contributory factor was disappointing sales in the consumer segment, particularly notebooks. Meanwhile, a shortage of harddisk drives resulting from floods in Thailand is forecast to restrain market growth in H112, with faster growth likely in H212.


AutoDesk, BIM, Building Information Modeling, Construction, M&A Activity, Project management, Vela Systems

Autodesk Acquires Vela Systems for Construction Management

Image representing Vela Systems as depicted in...

Autodesk, Inc. has acquired Vela Systems, a provider of cloud and mobile field management software for the construction industry. The addition of Vela Systems field management products to Autodesk’s growing portfolio of cloud and mobile products is helping to extend the value of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and project data to construction customers in the field. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“BIM has tremendous value in the planning and design aspects of construction projects, but if you can’t get that rich data into the field, at the point of construction, you are leaving out the critical ‘last 100 yards’ in the process. Integrating Vela Systems and its cloud and mobile products with the Autodesk BIM portfolio transforms the business of construction, delivering valuable information to job sites anywhere in the world,” said Amar Hanspal, Senior Vice President, Information Modeling and Platform Products Group.

Based in Burlington, Massachusetts, Vela Systems extends the power of BIM with cloud and mobile technologies that enable project and company-wide programs for streamlined management of quality, safety, commissioning and field construction. The powerful reporting tools provide immediate visibility into issues in the field, allowing for proactive management and resolution, rather than time consuming and expensive overruns caused by a reactive approach. Vela Systems software and services are integrated with current Autodesk integrated project management software including Autodesk Navisworks, the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry’s standard comprehensive set of integration, analysis, and communication tools for project review.

“Vela Systems has been a longstanding partner of Autodesk, and has been leading the charge in the field. The confluence of cloud computing, iOS mobile devices like the iPad and BIM has enabled a new way to deliver and manage construction projects of all types. With the acquisition, we will accelerate this revolution in field management through a broader solution and greatly enhanced distribution,” said Josh Kanner, co-founder, of Vela Systems.

Combined with the Autodesk BIM portfolio, the Vela Systems software has already helped contractors, owners, architects and engineers accelerate project schedules, reduce project risk, and improve the flow of information, including key data and project photos, between project stakeholders. Autodesk users can now reduce reliance on manual processes to track progress, document work activities and resolve issues. With the Vela Systems integration, users can also visualize the as-designed building in the field to improve quality and fidelity to design intent; streamline reviews; save money with more efficient workflows by linking physical tasks to a virtual model; and capture critical data on materials, systems, and equipment.

 


Bytemobile, Citrix, Citrix Systems, M&A Activity, Mobile, Mobile network operator, Video

Citrix Acquires Mobile Data, Video Optimization Provider Bytemobile

Image representing Bytemobile as depicted in C...

Citrix today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Bytemobile, a leading provider of data and video optimization solutions for mobile network operators. This acquisition gives Citrix a key strategic foothold in the core infrastructure of more than 130 mobile operators in 60 countries around the world, significantly extending the company’s market reach, and enhancing the broader Citrix strategy of powering mobile workstyles and cloud services.

With the advent of the Cloud Era, mobile operators are experiencing explosive growth in network traffic, driven by the combination of new consumer devices, rich multimedia content, and high speed 3G, 4G and LTE networks. By joining forces, Citrix and Bytemobile will be able to offer these operators combined solutions that deliver a high quality user experience to mobile subscribers, while helping operators manage the exponential growth of mobile network traffic with the best performance, visibility and efficiency. The acquisition builds on a strategic partnership announced earlier this year that combined the Bytemobile Smart Capacity™ technology with the Citrix NetScaler® line of cloud networking solutions.

This transaction has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is expected to close during the third quarter of 2012. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Citrix expects to discuss the acquisition in greater detail when it reports financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2012. Upon the close of this acquisition, Bytemobile will form a new Service Provider Platforms team as part of the Citrix Cloud Networking product group.

The acquisition of Bytemobile expands the market reach of Citrix from its existing leadership position with enterprise and cloud provider customers, into the rapidly growing mobile telecommunications space. Bytemobile brings Citrix leading technology, award-winning products, a strong customer base, and 12 years of customer relationships and deployment experience in mobile telecommunications. Bytemobile customers today serve more than 2 billion subscribers and process more than 20 petabytes of data traffic through customer networks daily.

Based near Citrix Silicon Valley headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., Bytemobile has approximately 300 employees, including product, sales and services teams around the world. In addition to optimizing mobile data and video traffic, Bytemobile solutions enable mobile operators to differentiate data service plans based on a wide variety of factors, including quality of experience and subscriber usage.

“The cloud and mobile revolutions are rapidly converging, and mobile operators are at the heart of this convergence,” said Klaus Oestermann, group vice president and general manager of cloud networking at Citrix. “With the integration of Bytemobile technology, products and intellectual capital, Citrix will be uniquely positioned to be a leader in the global mobile data and video infrastructure market in the LTE era.”

Since announcing their earlier strategic partnership at Mobile World Congress in February 2012, Citrix and Bytemobile have collaborated to deliver the Bytemobile T1100 Traffic Director, which helps operators scale next-generation mobile networks and apps with the application delivery intelligence and performance of the NEBS-compliant Citrix NetScaler platform. With this acquisition, Citrix and Bytemobile will further accelerate the ability to bring mobile operators a wide range of powerful solutions to enable mobile workstyles and power cloud services.

“The integration of Bytemobile will enable us to extend our value proposition to the edge of the network, bringing content closer to the end user,” continued Oestermann. “The benefits to network operators and their subscribers include faster, more efficient, more reliable, and more manageable networks; higher performance resulting in better service and a better user experience; and scalability to process growing volumes of data traffic at a much lower cost.”

Citrix plans to build on Bytemobile as the center of its go-to-market strategy for mobile network operators – retaining and growing its investment in the Bytemobile brand, technology, products, employees and customer relationships. Bytemobile will continue as an independent product group within the Citrix cloud networking group, leveraging clear synergies with adjacent technologies such as Citrix NetScaler.

“We are excited about the significance of this transaction for the industry, our customers, our employees, and our stockholders,” said Chris Koopmans, chief operating officer of Bytemobile. “With the rollout of LTE and other next-generation networks, the mobile data market is poised to grow dramatically in the coming years. The addition of Bytemobile solutions to the Citrix portfolio will accelerate the fulfillment of our vision and investment in the future of the industry.”


Apache Hadoop, Apache Hive, Big Data, BigData, Hadoop, MapReduce

Qubole Exits Stealth Mode, Introduces Auto-Scaling Big Data Platform

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Qubole exited stealth mode today to introduce its auto-scaling Big Data platform, “combining the power of Apache Hadoop and Hive with the simplicity of a Cloud platform in order to accelerate time-to-value from Big Data.” Qubole, a Silver Sponsor of next week’s Hadoop Summit 2012 conference, also invites business analysts, data scientists, and data engineers to participate in the Qubole early access program.

While most well known as creators of Apache Hive and long-time contributors to Apache Hadoop, Qubole’s founders Ashish Thusoo and Joydeep Sen Sarma also managed the Facebook data infrastructure team that was responsible for nearly 25PB of compressed data. The data services built by this team are used across business and engineering teams who submit tens of thousands of jobs, queries and ad hoc analysis requests every day. Thusoo and Sen Sarma applied their experiences and learnings to create the industry’s next generation big data platform for the cloud. With Qubole, organizations can literally begin uncovering new insights from their structured and unstructured data sources within minutes.

“We believe a new approach is needed – one that hides the complexity associated with storing and managing data and instead provides a fast, easy path to analysis and insights for business analysts, data scientists and data engineers,” said Joydeep Sen Sarma, Co-Founder of Qubole. “We gained significant experience helping a web-scale company build and manage a complex Big Data platform. We don’t want our customers to worry about choosing a flavor of Hadoop, or spinning up clusters, or trying to optimize performance. Qubole will manage all of that so that users can focus on their data and their algorithms.”

Qubole Auto-Scaling Big Data Platform for the Cloud Benefits Include:

  • Fastest Path to Big Data Analytics –
    Qubole handles all infrastructure complexities behind the scenes so
    users can begin doing ad hoc analysis and creating data pipelines
    using SQL and MapReduce within minutes.
  • Scalability “On the Fly” – Qubole
    features the industry’s first auto-scaling Hadoop clusters so users
    can get the right amount of computing power for each and every project.
  • Fast Query Authoring Tools – Qubole
    provides fast access to sample data so that queries can be authored
    and validated quickly.
  • Fastest Hadoop and Hive Service in the Cloud
    – Using advanced caching and query acceleration techniques, Qubole has
    demonstrated query speeds up to five times faster than other
    Cloud-based Hadoop solutions.
  • Quick Connection to Data – Qubole
    provides mechanisms to work with data sets stored in any format in
    Amazon S3. It also allows users to easily export data to S3 or to
    databases like MySQL.
  • Integrated Data Workflow Engine – Qubole
    provides mechanisms to easily create data pipelines so users can run
    their queries periodically with a high degree of reliability.
  • Enhanced Debugging Abilities – Qubole
    provides features that helps users get to errors in Hadoop/Hive jobs
    fast, thus saving time in debugging queries.
  • Easy Collaboration with Peers – Qubole’s
    Cloud-based architecture makes it ideal for analysts working in a
    geographically distributed environment to share information and
    analysis.

“Companies are increasingly moving to the Cloud and for good reason. Applications hosted in the Cloud are much easier to use and manage, especially for companies without very large IT organizations. While Software as a Service (SaaS) is now the standard for many different types of applications, it has not yet been made easy for companies to use the Cloud to convert their ever-increasing volume and variety of data into useful business and product insights. Qubole makes it much easier and faster for companies to analyze and process more of their Big Data, and they will benefit tremendously,” said Ashish Thusoo, Co-Founder of Qubole.

To join the early access program, please visit www.qubole.com. Qubole is looking to add a select number of companies for early access to its service, with the intention of making the service more generally available in Q4 2012. People interested in seeing a demo of the platform can visit Qubole at the Hadoop Summit June 13 – 14 at the San Jose Convention Center, kiosk #B11.