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June 21, 2010

Using Sybase IQ 15.2

In my previous entry, I listed out the major new features in Sybase IQ 15.2. This time, we’ll examine some scenarios to get a better understanding of how these new features address business problems for Sybase IQ users.

Text Search and Analysis

An insurance company implements a Sybase IQ-based  system to retain emails and other electronic documents in anticipation of future litigation and investigations. When a legal hold is placed on the company’s electronic information, or when an internal investigation is necessary, all the archived information can be searched and delivered within that system. The ability to quickly access vast amounts of electronic information that was previously inaccessible due to its unstructured format accelerates the legal process, aids investigative analysis, and improves the odds of mounting a successful case.

Using Sybase IQ 15.2 with Text Search and Analysis, this company can search for and retrieve relevant documents from a large set of continuously archived historical information. With  the ability to perform complex searches involving scoring, proximity and multiple terms, finding relevant information is now far easier than manual processes, plus simpler and more efficient than implementing a separate system just for text search.

Query Federation

A distributor maintains a Sybase IQ decision support system to aid in allocating stock to retailers and issuing procurement orders to manufacturers. Information regarding inventory levels at retailers would be helpful to the distributor, but some retailers’ inventory information is proprietary and they will not allow the distributor to maintain a copy. The distributor, however, is allowed to access the current inventory information for the SKUs it supplies. Query Federation is used to access the retailers’ database, leading to a more efficient procurement process.

Using Sybase IQ 15.2 with Query Federation, this distributor can access information in its original location, without moving it or copying it into the data warehouse.

Web-Enabled Analytics

Business analysts and statisticians at a marketing services firm are developing a customer segmentation model for a client who wants to target the most profitable segments. The analysts require fast time-to-result and access to data in Sybase IQ while validating their model. Python is their language of choice for fast prototyping. The analysts are able to quickly iterate in order to develop a satisfactory model that is tested against large data sets in Sybase IQ.

The model can now be ported to C/C++ for analyzing live customers in production use. Using Sybase IQ 15.2 with Web-Enabled Analytics, this marketing services firm reduced the time needed to meet its clients’ requests. Support for Python means that business-focused analysts can quickly develop and test their prototype models, and that the entire environment can be moved to the web should such a delivery model be required.

Real-Time Loading

An online shopping site employs a complex predictive model based on the customer’s profile combined with deep demographic data to drive upsell offers both at the time of purchase and during follow-up communications. The upsell offers come at various stages in the order  and fulfillment process. They are based on the customer’s profile and similar purchases made by other shoppers — with significant weighting on current and most recent purchases. Acceptance of an upsell offer is treated as an exception within the overall order fulfillment process.  Whenever possible, new purchases are added to the current customer shipment before it is sent out. Shipping staff rely on real-time reporting of these exceptions in order to support just-in-time shipping updates. In order to ensure the highest levels of upsell, improve shipping efficiencies, and maintain customer satisfaction,  the shopping site requires both carefully culled and  transformed data to power their predictive model as well as instant access to data for the shipping exception reports.

 Sybase IQ 15.2 offers multiple, flexible ways of bringing disparate data into the analytics environment in real time. Sybase Replication Server 15.5 supports immediate data access from Sybase ASE, while Sybase ETL 4.9 can support both batch and continuous data load from data sources such as Oracle and DB2. With this capability, the online shopping site can ensure the best upsell results without slowing their shipping schedule.

Posted by Sybase IQ at 9:59 PM

June 11, 2010

Smarter Answers Now with Sybase IQ 15.2

The BI and analytics environments that support business decision-makers require greater capability, reach, and versatility than ever before. Sybase IQ turns your information into better decisions, enabling you to gain the answers and insights that will drive your business forward.

The competitive playing field is changing dramatically. Top-performing companies are replacing gut-feel with data-driven decision and analysis. Three expansive forces are re-shaping the environment in which companies innovate and compete: the growing amount of data created and captured, the proliferation of mobile devices, and the resulting increase in action points made possible in part through ubiquitous mobility and cloud computing. As companies seek answers to which markets to pursue, which customers to serve, how to maximize profits, or where to optimize efficiencies, they will push existing systems far past their limitations. Today’s BI and analytics systems must be able to keep pace with massive volumes of data, adapt easily to evolving requirements, and serve a growing number of users, often via the Web or mobile devices.

As the market’s original and most widely used column-based analytics server, Sybase IQ powers the most demanding BI and analytics environments. Sybase IQ sets the standard for performance, flexible scalability, security, manageability, and affordability. Sybase IQ’s scalable, grid-based columnar architecture and patented data compression technology have made it the solution of choice for more than 1800 customers (and more than 3200 installations) worldwide. Recent additions to Sybase IQ’s robust set of capabilities include in-database analytics, data partitioning for information lifecycle management, and flexible assignment of read and write nodes.

Now, with version 15.2, Sybase IQ continues to extend the capability, reach, and versatility of analytics environments:

Text Search and Analysis

Businesses can no longer afford to allow key insights to remain locked in e-mail, file systems, and other unstructured formats. To open up these assets, Sybase IQ provides:

•      The ability to search for words and phrases within text data

•      The ability to perform Boolean and proximity searches

•      The ability to score the frequency with which a term occurs within a document.

Don’t miss our webcast, The Critical Role of Text Analytics in the BI Ecosystem.

Query Federation

Results-driven businesses demand new ways to overcome organizational and structural limits to accessing the information they need. To meet this challenge, Sybase IQ provides the ability to federate queries across both Sybase IQ and external data sources: This gives organizations:

Web-Enabled Analytics

A key component of meeting ever-changing business demands is an analytics infrastructure that is responsive to the evolution of how, when, and why businesses use analytics as well as the prevailing technologies used to meet these demands. For example, businesses need an analytics environment that is Web 2.0 app-friendly, including support for the major Web development tools. Sybase IQ provides support for the most common and preferred programming languages for developing Web applications:

Real-Time Loading

Business decision-makers demand access to mission-critical information delivered both when and how they need it. Sybase IQ 15.2 offers multiple, flexible ways of bringing data into the analytics environment.

Sybase Replication Server 15.5 supports immediate data access (from Sybase ASE), while Sybase ETL 4.9 can support both batch and continuous data load.

Smarter Answers Now = Better Business Decisions

No matter the volume or type of information, the speed at which it’s needed, the detail to which it is examined, or the number of decision-makers trying to access it, Sybase IQ delivers precise, actionable answers.  For enterprises turning to mission-critical, high-performance and cost-effective analytics solutions as a better way to innovate and win, Sybase IQ turns your information into better decisions.

Posted by Sybase IQ at 5:00 PM