EMC Throws Out Big-Data Lifesaver

Hot on the heels of its survey that shows we are drowning in a growing big-data deluge, EMC is announcing a lifesaver: the Greenplum Unified Analytics Platform (UAP). Intended to serve as a foundation for the company's data analytics strategy, it brings together three Greenplum products into a unified offering: the database for structured data; the enterprise Hadoop offering for the analysis and processing of unstructured data; and Chorus 2.0, a social media collaboration tool for data science teams.

We are facing "a rampant scarcity" for the skills necessary to capitalize on the opportunity to profit from the intersection of big data and data analytics, with only a third of the companies participating in the EMC Data Science Study able to effectively use new data to assist their business decision-making, gain competitive advantage, drive productivity growth, yield innovation and reveal customer insights, says the storage giant. According to Gartner, big data is a term used to acknowledge the exponential growth, availability and use of information in the data-rich landscape of tomorrow. Worldwide information volume is growing annually at a minimum rate of 59% annually. IDC reports that spending on these technologies is growing at about 18% per year and is expected to account for at least 80% of IT spending growth between now and 2020 (IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020).

EMC acquired Greenplum, a pioneer in developing massively parallel, scale-out architectures on commodity x86 hardware, in July 2010. Just 75 days later, it announced the Greenplum Data Computing Appliance, which combines business analytics applications with computer, storage, network and database functionality.

Based on customer input, EMC is making a couple of bets with the new offering, says EMC's Luke Lonergan, VP/CTO, data computing division, and a Greenplum cofounder. "So what we're doing with Greenplum UAP is creating a product that will be a store-once-use-many value proposition." With availability scheduled for the first quarter of 2012, the company has been testing the individual components both internally and with a few customers, but Lonergan says the company has been working on the concept for the last two years.

Big data analytics in general, whether it is a massively parallel processing (MPP) analytical database or a Hadoop-based cluster, is still emerging but picking up momentum, says Julie Lockner, senior analyst and VP, data management, Enterprise Strategy Group. "When IT vendors offer solutions that make it easier for IT to implement these workload-specific solutions in their data center, without breaking traditional data center operational standards, there is one less barrier to entry. A unified platform may be overkill for some organizations; it may be exactly what an organization has been looking for from multiple vendors and can now get it from one. At least with the direction EMC and other vendors in this market are going, organizations that can really benefit from these platforms have more options."

She says the biggest strength of Greenplum UAP is the ability for IT to be able to service multiple data analytics requests for the business, leveraging one platform as opposed to multiple. "When data analytics requirements require relational structured data to be analyzed, IT can leverage the Greenplum DB. When the data analytics requirements are based on non-relational data better suited for Hadoop, they have it at the ready. Additionally, because there is such a lack of skilled resources who know how to configure and build these various workload analytics platforms, having something that is more turnkey means that organizations can get more mileage out of the resources they have. Additionally, because of the enhancements in the new Chorus release, organizations that have multiple analytical teams that could benefit from collaboration will be able to see some significant efficiencies. One data scientist in engineering develops a breakthrough data model that could be leveraged by the analytics team in finance--Chorus gives both teams access to the same model so finance doesn’t have to re-invent the wheel."

Lockner sees this as more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary announcement, especially with a major shortage in skilled resources. “In the short term, this may provide a data scientist with the ability to access tools and technology to expand their portfolio of analysts to multistructure content, where maybe before they were constrained because they had to pick one platform and make it work. Chorus opens up more of an enterprise sale for Greenplum, so rather than selling department by department, they can get the CIO and the business executives to leverage a common analytics platform and get some leverage. Before, they may have been more likely to purchase an analytics platform per department."

Forrester senior analyst Jim Kobielus says EMC Greenplum is one of the foremost data warehousing vendors, competing with the likes of Teradata, Oracle and IBM. "Greenplum was one of the first pure-play startups that turned this market around ... [and the EMC acquisition provided] testament to the maturity of their technology." It was a pioneer in rolling out a Hadoop appliance, and the first to offer an appliance that did Hadoop, data warehousing and analytics in a single box. He expects similar announcements next year from the other competitors in a market worth $7 billion annually for software and hardware, and two to three times that in services.

Overall, he likes what EMC is doing, from a unified platform to re-energizing the ecosystem to recruit partners to build advanced analytics tools for data scientists to build big data applications. He's seen nothing similar yet from the competition, which gives Greenplum the "first-mover advantage."

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