Adam Gartenberg's Blog

Interesting results from DB2 BLU vs SAP HANA data mart sizing

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• May 28, 2013
• Category:  IBM  DB2  SAP 

Paul Zikopoulos recently shared on Twitter some results from a sizing done on a 10 TeraByte data mart, comparing IBM DB2 BLU on Power Systems with SAP HANA.

To summarize some of the primary differences the team found in this particular instance:

• HANA requires 4x more RAM
• HANA requires 10x more required disk
• HANA requires 10x more CPU cores
• With HANA , the client would have to buy new hardware and not reuse the hardware they have
• HANA would require Intel Westmere processors, not Intel Sandy Bridge processors
• HANA must backup to disks and can't back up to Tivoli Storage Manager, Netbackup or Legato
• HANA isn't able to offer controls to restrict DBAs without a business need from reading data

You can see more over on the @BigData_paulz Twitter feed.

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Trident Marketing Increases Revenue 1,000% with Predictive Analytics

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• May 9, 2013
• Category:  IBM  PureData  BigData 

A few weeks back I attended the IBM Big Data, Integration and Governance Forum in Charlotte, NC.  (If you haven't made it to one yet yourself, we've got more of these events coming up in a number of cities in the US and around the world.)

It's always good to hear our executives speak about how IBM is approaching the area of Big Data, the type of use cases that we're seeing businesses focus on, and learn more about the latest innovations in the fields of Information Integration and DB2 with BLU acceleration.  But the highlight for me was when Brandon Brown spoke on behalf of Trident Marketing and the results they've seen from running analytics on Netezza (now PureData for Analytics) along with support from IBM Business Partner Fuzzy Logix.

You can find much of what Brandon shared in the Trident Marketing case study, which describes some of the areas through which they have increased revenue nearly 1,000 percent through their use of predictive analytics.

Operational efficiency is crucial for Trident Marketing, which is a direct response marketing firm that resells solutions from brands such as DirectTV, ADT and Travel Resorts of America.  Spending too much on marketing (or on the wrong marketing) and having too high a customer churn rate was holding the company back from hitting their growth targets.  After deploying analytics, they saw revenue rapidly increase from the $5M plateau they had been on to $53M in just four years.

Trident deployed analytics in a few strategic areas.  One set of analytic models combines data from the company’s telephony, customer relationship management and order entry systems
with data from external sources, such as credit bureaus and clickstream data from Google and Bing.  This new level of insight led to a 10% increase in revenue in just 60 days, while also allowing them to reduce marketing costs by 30% be eliminating unproductive search terms or terms that were not cost effective.

But that's not all that Netezza and Fuzzy Logix helped them do:

What is most exciting, says Trident Marketing CIO Brandon Brown, is the use of predictive analytics to help its telemarketers know exactly whom to call, at what moment, and in what geography about what product. It will also enable the company to predict which sales person would have the best chance of closing a particular sale and which products each caller would most likely be interested in.

Check out the full case study for more details.

Link:
Trident Marketing Increases Revenue 1,000% with Predictive Analytics

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IBM X-Force Trends: Data Breach Issues and Solutions (Upcoming Webcast)

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• May 1, 2013
• Category:  IBM  Security 

If you are an IT security, compliance and data management professional, you're likely working harder than ever to secure your enterprise against both internal and external threats.

If you'd like to get a better look into recent public vulnerability disclosures and understand the lessons that can be learned from those situations, you'll want to check out the upcoming Dark Reading "IBM X-Force 2012 Annual Trend Report: Data Breach Issues and Solutions" webcast. (May 9, 2pm ET)

Join Robert Freeman of IBM X-Force® Advanced Research as he presents an in-depth analysis of recent public vulnerability disclosures and discusses important lessons learned.

By attending this free, highly informative webcast, you’ll discover:

• Five common mistakes IT organizations make when it comes to data security
• Why the cloud makes it more important than ever to understand how users access data
• How to implement evolving best security practices despite limited IT resources

Webcast attendees will also receive a complimentary copy of the IBM X-Force 2012 Annual Trend Report.

Click here to Register or find out more

Date: Thursday, May 9, 2013
Time: 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT

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Reminder: Big Data at the Speed of Business Broadcast (4/30)

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• April 24, 2013
• Category:  IBM  Big Data  DB2 

 

As a reminder, we'll be holding a broadcast next Tuesday, April 30th,  where we'll be discussing details on the recent DB2 with BLU Acceleration and Big Data Platform announcements.  

The event will feature General Manager Bob Picciano, VP of Development Martin Wildberger, VP of Product Strategy Inhi Suh, as well as first-hand experiences shared by a client panel and a Q&A session.  The broadcast will be held at two times, 11am-12pm EDT and 9pm - 10pm EDT, and you can register here. 

Agenda:

• Fueling Change in the New Era of Computing - Bob Picciano, General Manager, Information Management, IBM Software
• IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration: Enabling Speed of the Thought Analytics - Martin Wildberger, Vice President, Information Management Development, IBM Software
• Client & Partner Experiences with IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration
• IBM Big Data Platform: Advancing Consumability and Performance of Big Data Solutions - Inhi Suh, Vice President, Information Management Product Strategy, IBM Software
• Client Experience with IBM Big Data Platform
• Question & Answers

Register Today

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Announcement Review: IBM’s New Moves in Big Data

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• April 11, 2013
• Category:  IBM  DB2  BigData 

Joe Clabby of Clabby Analytics has posted his first take on the DB2 and Big Data announcements we made last week.  You can read his full write-up here: IBM’s New Moves in Big Data: Acceleration, Optimization, and an Open Source Alternative (pdf)

IBM’s New Moves in Big Data: Acceleration, Optimization, and an Open Source Alternative

IBM Almaden Labs, San Jose, CA, April 2, 2013
In a major, multi-faceted announcement, IBM announced yesterday that it will soon deliver “speed-of-thought” analytics using DB2 “BLU” acceleration, improvements in its BigInsights and Stream products, and a tuned-for-Hadoop PureData System. IBM also announced time series improvements in Informix database line. What do all of these announcements mean?

From a big picture perspective, IBM is doing the following:

• Dramatically accelerating the performance of its analytics products;
• Simplifying the deployment and operations of analytics systems (turnkey analytics systems combined with usability improvements in software);
• Creating an “enterprise-class” alternative to open source Hadoop offerings;
• Differentiating itself in the smart meter and sensor data analysis markets; and,
• Increasing competitive pressure on Oracle and Teradata in the database and analytics markets.

> More


Reminder: Register for the April 30th IBM broadcast to learn more about our recent announcements.

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New Ad: Big Data and Analytics

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• April 8, 2013
• Category:  IBM  BigData 

Here's a new ad on Big Data and Analytics that will be debuting on TV at the Masters golf tournament this week:


More:
Big data and analytics can help predict trends down to the customer. Sales down to the shelf. What can big data and analytics do for you? Learn more at http://ibm.co/10x97Xc

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Two opportunities to learn more about the Data Mgmt and Big Data announcements

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• April 3, 2013
• Category:  IBM  DB2  BigData 

If you'd like to learn more about all of the Data Management and Big Data announcements made yesterday, we've got two great opportunities coming up.

First up is a Google Hangout Video Chat this Friday, April 5, starting at 2pm US-EDT.  During the chat you'll hear from panelists Jeff Kelly (Wikibon), James Kobielus (IBM), Mike Martin (BTRG) and others.  Head on over here to learn more and RSVP.

The second opportunity will be to join us on April 30th for a broadcast event featuring General Manager Bob Picciano, VP of Development Martin Wildberger, VP of Product Strategy Inhi Suh, as well as first-hand experiences shared by a client panel and a Q&A session.  The broadcast will be held at two times, 11am-12pm EDT and 9pm - 10pm EDT, and you can register here.

Agenda:

• Fueling Change in the New Era of Computing - Bob Picciano, General Manager, Information Management, IBM Software
• IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration: Enabling Speed of the Thought Analytics - Martin Wildberger, Vice President, Information Management Development, IBM Software
• Client & Partner Experiences with IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration
• IBM Big Data Platform: Advancing Consumability and Performance of Big Data Solutions - Inhi Suh, Vice President, Information Management Product Strategy, IBM Software
• Client Experience with IBM Big Data Platform
• Question & Answers

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IBM Announces New Innovations to Help Organizations Benefit From Big Data

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• April 3, 2013
• Category:  IBM  BigData  DB2  Hadoop  Informix  PureData 

As I posted earlier in the day, IBM is making a number of announcements today, including new releases of DB2; PureData Systems; InfoSphere BigInsights, Streams and Entity Analytics; and Informix TimeSeries.  What they have in common is that they are all centered around helping organizations benefit from Big Data.

Today's announcements include:

• BLU Acceleration, a breakthrough set of technologies, including Dynamic In-Memory technology, that deliver speed of thought analytics over terabytes  
• DB2 10.5 with BLU Acceleration, flexible, multi-workload database software including 8 to 25x faster reporting and analytics, up to 1000x  performance improvement, 10-25x overall database savings, always available transactions and unprecedented reliability
• PureData System for Hadoop simplifies the complexities of deploying big data in the enterprise and augments the data warehouse with a queryable archive
• InfoSphere BigInsights, Streams, and Entity Analytics provide innovations in our big data platform to improve performance, consumability and exploration of big data in motion and at rest
• Informix TimeSeries delivers operational reporting and analytics acceleration for smart meter and sensor data

See below for links to more in-depth technical background, and head on over to DeveloperWorks for a free trial of DB2 10.5 with BLU Acceleration.

Today's press release provides more background on the various elements of these announcements:

BLU Acceleration enables users to have much faster access to key information, leading to better decision-making. The software extends the capabilities of traditional in-memory systems -- which allows data to be loaded into Random Access Memory instead of hard disks for faster performance -- by providing in-memory performance even when data sets exceed the size of the memory. During testing, some queries in a typical analytics workload were more than 1000 times faster when using the combined innovations of BLU Acceleration.
Innovations in BLU Acceleration include "data skipping," which allows the ability to skip over data that doesn't need to be analyzed, such as duplicate information; the ability to analyze data in parallel across different processors; and greater ability to analyze data transparently to the application, without the need to develop a separate layer of data modeling. Another industry-first advance in BLU Acceleration is called "actionable compression," where data no longer has to be decompressed to be analyzed.  

PureData System for Hadoop is definitely something you should explore if you are looking at including Hadoop in your enterprise deployment:

The new system can reduce from weeks to minutes the ramp-up time organizations need to adopt enterprise-class Hadoop technology with powerful, easy-to-use analytic tools and visualization for both business analysts and data scientists. In addition, it provides enhanced Big Data tools for monitoring, development and integration with many more enterprise systems.  

Also included in today's announcement are updates to the following products:

• A new version of InfoSphere BigInsights, IBM’s enterprise-ready Hadoop offering, which makes it simpler to develop applications using existing SQL skills, compliance security and high availability features vital for enterprise applications. BigInsights offers three entry points: free download, enterprise software and now an expert integrated system, IBM PureData System for Hadoop.
• A new version of InfoSphere Streams, unique “stream computing” software that enables massive amounts of data in motion to be analyzed in real-time, with performance improvements, and simplified application development and deployment.
• A new version of Informix including TimeSeries Acceleration for operational reporting and analytics on smart meter and sensor data.

In Depth View
If you'd like a more in-depth look at the technology being announced, head on over to the online IBM Data Magazine, where you'll find articles on DB2 10.5 with BLUE Acceleration, Informix 12.1, and the new PureData System for Hadoop.

Additional Coverage

• NY Times: Why Big Data Is IBM's Friend
• ZDNet: IBM spills more about Hadoop strategy with new PureData System
• KMWorld: IBM doubles down on big data
• Jeff Kelly, Wikibon.org: IBM Accelerates Its Big Data Portfolio
• Twitter: #BigDataMgmt

More from IBM on Big Data and Data Management

• Free trial of DB2 10.5 with BLU Acceleration
• ibm.com: Big Data at the Speed of Business
• IBM Big Data Hub
• Online Broadcast (4/30) - Register

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Information On Demand 2013: Call for Speakers

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• April 3, 2013
• Category:  IBM  IOD 

Session proposals for this year's Information On Demand conference will be accepted from April 4th - 30th, so if you have an interesting story to share about products, solutions, or implementations, please head on over and submit a proposal.  

IT professionals, including managers, architects, and developers should submit proposals for technical sessions across Information Management, Business Analytics and Enterprise Content Management.  C-suite executives and senior decision makers in Line of Business and IT management roles should submit proposals about industry-related thought leadership and innovative ideas for Business Leadership sessions.  

You can find more information at ibm.com/software/data/2013-conference/speakers, and for everyone else, remember that registration opens on May 15.

ibm.com/events/informationondemand

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NY Times: Why Big Data Is I.B.M.’s Friend

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• Author: Adam Gartenberg
• April 3, 2013
• Category:  IBM  BigData 

The Bits blog in today's NY Times highlights some important news on Big Data that IBM is sharing today while also describing why Big Data is so important to the businesses that IBM works with (and why IBM in turn is putting so much investment into related technology.)

Case in point: I.B.M. just announced a series of technologies intended to make data analysis faster and more powerful. That is probably good news to Big Blue’s core customer base of large corporations, which are increasingly drowning in digital information from both the Web and the physical world. A good portion of that data is already derived from and running on I.B.M. technology.

I.B.M.’s offerings include an easier way to load corporate data into an I.B.M. machine and produce analysis quickly; an analysis “accelerator,” which can speed the production of analytics reports, I.B.M. says; and a Big Data “appliance,” or combination of hardware and software, that enables companies to posit questions, then have them answered automatically when the appropriate data comes along.

Bob Picciano, General Manager for IBM's Information Management business, highlights the type of performance improvement that will now be possible, such as running queries that might previously have taken two days in only three minutes.  The article cites just one example of this type of improvement:  "A customer cited by I.B.M., BNSF Railway, was said to have had a 100-fold improvement and a 90 percent drop in data storage consumption using the new technologies."

You can read the full article at the link below, and check back in here for further updates throughout the day.

Links:  

• NY Times: Why Big Data Is I.B.M.’s Friend
• IBM Big Data Hub
• IBM.com:  Big Data

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