HP Unleashes the Power of Big Data

HP recently announced enhancements to its Information Optimisation solutions, designed to help organisations capitalise on the explosion of information, including operational and application data, as well as machine data.

The extreme volume, variety and velocity of information today has placed unprecedented burdens on organisations. According to research conducted on behalf of HP, only 2 percent of business and technology executives said their organisations can deliver the right information, at the right time to support the right business outcomes all of the time.⁽¹⁾

Legacy approaches to information management, which rely on outdated information architectures, infrastructure and analytics, fail to discover the concepts and value found in all forms of information.  They are also incapable of cost-effectively scaling and processing the oceans of information collected in unstructured, structured and machine data, in real time.  These shortcomings are especially evident in an age when changing customer sentiment plays out over Twitter, YouTube, the Web, phone calls and emails, many of which happen outside the enterprise walls. This sentiment can also come in the form of foot traffic picked up by sensors in retail outlets.

Through new solutions, which span technology from Autonomy, Vertica, and HP Converged Infrastructure, only HP enables organisations to manage, understand and act on 100 percent of information.

“Big data presents big opportunities – and challenges – for organisations today,” said Frank Van Rees, Managing Director and Enterprise Business Lead, HP South Africa.  “HP’s powerful information optimisation solutions deliver the technologies and expertise required to help organisations succeed in this new era – by tackling any data type, source or environment.  Whether on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid, HP offerings allow organisations to turn big data into growth, opportunity and competitive advantage.”

Managing Big Data with HP Converged Infrastructure and Hadoop

Many organisations experiencing dramatic information growth are turning to Apache Hadoop, an open source distributed data processing technology to meet their needs for storing and managing petabytes of information.

 HP App System for Apache™ Hadoop™ is a turnkey appliance that simplifies and speeds deployment while optimising performance and analysis of extreme scale-out Hadoop workloads. The solution combines HP Converged Infrastructure, common management as well as advanced integration with Vertica 6 to deliver massive data processing and real-time analytics.

In addition, clients can find the right solutions to their information optimisation challenges with new services:

• The HP Big Data Strategy Workshop enables clients to reduce risk and accelerate decision making by providing a deep understanding of big data challenges and available solutions. Clients learn how to align corporate IT and enterprise goals to identify critical success factors, as well as methods for evolving their IT infrastructure to handle big data.

The HP Roadmap Service for Hadoop empowers organisations to size and plan the deployment of the Hadoop platform. Taking best practices, experience and organisational considerations into account, the service develops a roadmap that helps drive the successful planning, deployment, and support for Hadoop.

 Understand Any Information, In Any Location, In Any Way

With the introduction of Vertica 6, the latest version of the HP Vertica Analytics Platform, companies now have the ability to connect to, analyse, and manage any type of information located in any location using any interface.  Vertica’s unique FlexStore™ architecture delivers a flexible framework for Big Data analytics, including advanced integration or federation with Hadoop, Autonomy, or any other structured, unstructured, or semi-structured data source.

As part of the Vertica 6 release, Vertica is expanding its distributed computing framework to include support for the parallel execution of the advanced R analytics language natively within Vertica.  With enhanced support for Cloud and SaaS implementations, as well as deeper capabilities for mixed workload environments, Vertica 6 gives HP the most robust, comprehensive platform for Big Data analytics available.

As part of HP’s strategy to understand 100 percent of an organisation’s data, HP announced new capabilities for embedding the IDOL 10 engine in each Hadoop node in the HP App System for Hadoop, so users can take advantage of over 500 IDOL functions, including automatic categorisation, clustering, education and hyperlinking.  The combination of Autonomy IDOL, Vertica with the HP App System for Hadoop, enables organisations to access the deep processing power, conceptual understanding and diverse data sets enabled by these information optimisation technologies

Acting Upon Insight to develop Foresight

Extending its industry-leading digital marketing platform, HP also unveiled a new Autonomy solution, Optimost Clickstream Analytics, providing marketers with a single, consistent view of customer visits, conversions and engagement through ecommerce.  The solution leverages the Vertica Analytics Platform and Autonomy IDOL to provide marketers with access to granular clickstream data, enabling them to aggregate, combine and analyse the information any way they choose.

HP has been investing in innovation to build out the industry’s most comprehensive Information Optimisation solutions portfolio, with unique intellectual property and technologies that solve customers’ big data challenges. This portfolio, which spans technology from Autonomy, Vertica, and HP Converged Infrastructure, positions HP as the only vendor who can help organisations to manage, understand and act on 100 percent of information.

Additional information about HP’s announcements at its premier client event, HP Discover, is available at www.hp.com/go/hpdiscover2012.