This white paper discusses how organizations can transform big data into business value by connecting various data sources, analyzing data at scale, and taking action. It outlines the challenges of dealing with exponentially growing data in today's digital world. The paper introduces Actian's solutions for enabling an "action-driven enterprise" through its DataCloud Platform for invisible integration and ParAccel Platform for unconstrained analytics. These platforms allow organizations to connect diverse data, analyze it without constraints, and automate actions based on insights gleaned from big data analytics. Use cases demonstrate how companies are leveraging Actian's technology to gain competitive advantages.

1. WHITE PAPER
Transforming Big Data
into Business Value
Connect, Analyze and Act with Actian

2. WHITE PAPER
Transforming Big Data into Business Value
Contents
Overview
3
Introduction
3
The Age of Data
4
Universal Use of Analytics
5
A New IT Landscape
5
The Challenges
6
Enabling the Action-Driven Enterprise
6
Two New Platforms: Connect, Analyze, Act
Invisible Integration:
Actian DataCloud Platform
7
Unconstrained Analytics:
ParAccel Big Data Analytics Platform
7
8
Actian ParAccel Big Data Analytics
Platform Use Cases
10
Conclusion
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3. WHITE PAPER
Transforming Big Data into Business Value
Overview
We live in the Age of Data. It is imperative, now more than ever, that organizations harness
the power of data, the information that runs in and around their corporate entity and the
bits and bytes that are in fact the very lifeblood of businesses today. Without the ability to
connect, analyze – and act on data, organizations will not succeed long-term. The winners
will be those companies that deploy technology to run sophisticated analytics on massive
amounts of data and take action to capitalize on their data.
This white paper sets out to explain the challenges and opportunities that businesses face
in today’s Age of Data and how they can turn big data into business value.
Introduction
Big Data. These two words mean different things to different people, and yet, regardless of
what they mean to you, you cannot escape the fact that we are firmly ensconced in the Age
of Data. Data is generated by more devices than ever before and flows constantly through
more systems every single day. In the last two years we have generated more data than in
the history of mankind. And yet, that pales in significance when you consider that data is
expected to double in size every two years through 2020, exceeding 40 zettabytes (40
trillion gigabytes), which is the equivalent of 5,200GB of data for every man, woman
and child on Earth.
Why and how is this important to businesses? In the Age of Data, our ability to connect
emerging data, analyze it at scale, and take action in real-time means the difference
between winning and losing. For companies to guarantee future growth and success, it is
imperative that they implement a technology approach today that will help them gain and
sustain a competitive advantage over time.
Just as you would expect a commercial entity to harness the Internet in its business
model – an idea that changed the landscape and our lives in less than a decade – now
the same applies for organizations that intend to make the most of data. In fact, the Age
of Data is set to have the same kind of profound change on how business is done. We are
already seeing how organizations that harness data are leaving those that don’t in the dust.
Recently Actian brought together some of the world’s most advanced technologies that
have been built from the ground up to transform big data into business value by enabling
organizations to connect various data sources together, analyze growing combinations
of data, and then take action on insights gleaned.
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
The Age of Data
The Internet, sensors, monitors, apps and the new “social media” paradigm are all
generating massive amounts of data, more than we have ever seen before. What has
changed? Data used to be stored in data centers, now it is everywhere. Data used to be
stored in static conditions, now it’s in motion. Today, data is born digitally and it flows
constantly; the data valve has been turned on and will never be turned off.
In fact, data is now omnipresent. As it emerges from three key areas, it overwhelms
traditional technology and presents us with a tremendous opportunity. These three key
areas are:
› Digital data and the Internet: A new wave of smart sensors and monitors connected
to the Internet have spawned everything digital – digital logistics, digital oil fields,
digital hospitals, smart grids, smart meters, smart cars, smart appliances – all
producing trillions of time-stamped, location-based events every single day.
› Behavioral data and the sprawl of apps: A new wave of apps has created massive
volumes of behavioral data tracking every move of their users: Web apps, mobile
apps, gaming, and smart devices for everything from health to athletics, shopping,
amusement, law enforcement and mining. Discovering patterns in behavior can
lead to pinpoint accuracy for both prediction and prevention strategies.
› Conversational data and the new paradigm of social media: The social media
phenomenon with Facebook, Twitter and other sharing media have created a new
paradigm that elevates the relationship and conversations that take place in communities. The new paradigm heightens the importance of conversations everywhere from
intelligence operations to retail organizations, from medical facilities to data centers.
The conversation about data can sometimes be more valuable than the data itself.
Data ubiquity – three fast-growing types of data sources
Digital
Behavioral
Social
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
Universal Use of Analytics
In addition to the new IT landscape and exponentially growing data volumes, Moore’s law
has taken compute power to a point where sophisticated analytics are showing up all over
the place: on desktops, in databases, in business processes, in chips and especially in
places like complex supply chains and digital marketing optimization engines.
Algorithms run on their own preventing fraud and deterring risk. Analysts use them
every day to determine the right strategy for their organizations. In fact, algorithms are
everywhere.
The value of analytics has pushed these algorithms mainstream, opening the door for
everyone from the data scientist to the business analyst to thrive in the world of new
analytics easily and affordably. Businesses are realizing the benefits that analytics and
fast answers to questions can produce. In particular, analytics allow organizations to:
› Discover what can’t be seen with human observation in order to take action on
a new opportunity or avoid impending risk
› Predict what is most likely to happen and respond favorably
› Prevent something detrimental from happening
› Prescribe the next best action or next best offer
A New IT Landscape
At the same time that data is being generated and begins flowing through our businesses,
the IT industry has moved from mainframe through client server and the web to third
generation commoditization of infrastructure as delivered by the likes of Google, Amazon,
eBay and Facebook. Indeed, data-centric and data-intensive companies are flocking to the
cloud, and SaaS offerings are quickly passing up traditional software applications with
fast-growing user adoption. This growth is being driven by three things:
› Consumerization of IT: No matter how unrealistic or impossible it may be, line of
business users expect and demand a simple, instantaneous “one-click” experience.
Organizations must deliver a fast, frictionless experience
› Ultra-complexity of infrastructure: Trillions of transactions, billions of users and
millions of apps all running on a mix of commodity infrastructure have complicated
the management of infrastructure beyond manual capabilities
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
› Technology-driven competition: “Deploy or die” has become the mantra of industry
leaders. Deploying modern technology to gain a competitive advantage is no
longer optional
The Challenges
In order to gain and maintain a competitive edge, organizations must take advantage of
data integration, analytics and cloud technology in order to succeed. However, there are
three major challenges keeping them from winning in the Age of Data:
› Traditional integration approaches don’t scale to meet the complexity and real-time
need to combine data at rest with data in motion, or to combine data on-premises
with data in the cloud
› The explosion of emerging data and new analytics makes it impossible for legacy
technology to scale and perform to meet the analytic demands that inform real-time
action. In today’s world, there is no single platform to handle all of the different
workloads necessary to extract value from data
› Traditional data center delivery strategies are too complex to manage the explosion
of data, apps, and analytics running on commodity hardware. Companies are
flocking to cloud and SaaS as a solution to their challenges
Enabling the Action-Driven Enterprise
Responding to the call from businesses to be able to sync their data, make sense of
it and then turn it into business outcomes that drive their organizations forward, Actian
has been busy developing technology platforms that help them tackle these issues.
Actian helps clients transform big data into big value by enabling them to address the
challenges and opportunities brought on by the Age of Data and the emergence of new
analytics. Furthermore, Actian offers the quickest time to analytic value with a modular
approach that integrates data assets behind the scenes and scales without limits.
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
Actian delivers a comprehensive suite of solutions that allows businesses to connect various
data types together, analyze them at incredibly fast speeds and then take action on them to
gain a competitive advantage in the market.
› Connect: connect seamlessly with invisible integration across millions of data sources
on-premise or in the cloud
›
Analyze: analyze anything with unconstrained analytics across entire ecosystems of
data, users and applications
› Act: automate action with real-time intelligence for anyone in the office or on the move
Two New Platforms: Connect, Analyze, Act
Invisible Integration: Actian DataCloud Platform
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
The Actian DataCloud Platform offers fast, scalable data integration both on-premises and
in the cloud. The platform provides a single place for companies to easily access, connect
and manage the totality of their business data.
Furthermore, the platform empowers companies to combine freely available data and
unstructured Hadoop data with their highly governed internal data to see a new picture,
analyze it and then act upon insight gained.
Most importantly, it abstracts the complexities of data integration, offering an easy-to-use
interface suitable for line of business users.
The platform delivers invisible integration with a high-performance, behind the scenes data
provisioning engine so that organizations can use combined data sets to get a complete
picture of every angle of every business process. In particular, it lets organizations:
›
Choose data services from a storefront of pre-integrated mixes of data sources
designed to meet specific business requirements
› Leverage a comprehensive Integration Suite to manage the lifecycle of any data
› Benefit from full app-to-app connectivity and integration
› Use a cloud integration hub for SaaS applications
Unconstrained Analytics: ParAccel Big Data Analytics Platform
Built from the ground up to run high-performance analytics on massive amounts of
data, the Actian ParAccel Big Data Analytics Platform delivers unconstrained analytics to
everyone from the individual analyst to the army of analysts supporting major organizations.
Without constraints, anyone can access the data they need, enrich the data for deeper
meaning and run high performance analytics at the real-time speed of business. Whether
you need to lay the foundation for enterprise analytics or accelerate time to analytic value
for a single application, the ParAccel Platform is the right choice for the Age of Data.
The ParAccel Platform allows companies to think outside the box when it comes to
analytic applications. The highest performing analytic platform combined with the most
comprehensive set of analytic capabilities opens a new world of possibilities. Specifically,
the platform:
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
›
Delivers unconstrained analytics with a real-time, high performance platform so that
companies both large and small can prescribe the next best action, prevent damage
to their business and discover hidden risk and opportunities
›
Extracts analytic value from data at any place along the data journey, helping
companies create business opportunity, drive business momentum and sustain
competitive advantage
›
Shares both data and processes on-demand providing connectivity with other data
sources like data warehouses, Hadoop, streaming data sources and machine data
Actian’s ParAccel Platform enables organization to take the right action on big data. With
the most cooperative analytic processing and the most flexible deployment options in the
industry, organizations are already leveraging the Age of Data to do the following:
›
Deploy a powerful analytics engine for the continuous growth of an ecosystem of data
sources, data platforms, data scientists, big data analysts and analytic applications
› without limits for massive amounts of data, emerging data types, high-volume
Scale
analytics, sophisticated analytics and massive populations
›
Speed the delivery of analytics with complete solutions for data provisioning, data
discovery, data enrichment, high performance business intelligence, discovery and
predictive analytics and intelligent, action-oriented applications
›
Choose from libraries of analytics and open the world of analytics to both data and
business analysts and quickly deploy a wide range of analytic applications
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
Actian ParAccel Big Data Analytics Platform Use Cases
The ParAccel Platform has many use cases that prove how it helps organizations turn
their businesses into action-enabled enterprises. Winning companies are utilizing
unconstrained analytics to do the following:
›
Analyze customer profiles from 76 percent of the American population and data from
300 million daily searches, including 50,000 user attributes
› fraud analytics across 440,000 ATMs, supporting 95 million cards and over
Run
2 million POS locations
› digital marketing algorithms against more than 1 billion transactions every day
Run
›
Recalculate 10,000 customer segments, with 50,000 user attributes, 20 times a day
and deliver more than 300 million ad recommendations
› matching algorithms against more than 2.5 billion records multiple times per day
Run
› a 46-hour Oracle market basket analysis query in just 30 seconds
Run
› Build a 7-hour Oracle shrink processing report in just 1 minute and 15 seconds
› Load data at a rate of 160 TB per hour, or 2.66 TB per minute
›
Transform and load ticker data at a rate of 2.5 million records per second to provide
the freshest information possible
› up a 42GB analytic mart with 866 million rows and 8 tables in just 1 minute
Spin
and 8 seconds
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Transforming Big Data into Business Value
Conclusion
Today we are witnessing the start of a new era. After 40 years of focus on hardware and
software, we are now firmly ensconced in the Age of Data. In the near future, maintaining
a competitive edge will come from exploring new ways to ingest growing torrents of data
from a myriad of sources, using advanced analytics to isolate meaningful correlations and
patterns in near real-time and prompting business actions that deliver value based on
those insights.
For more information about the Actian DataCloud Platform and the Actian ParAccel
Big Data Analytics Platform, go to http://www.actian.com.
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12. Actian Corporation
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