Birst Wants to Democratize Big Data

Ann All

Updated · Jan 12, 2012

Organizations of all sizes, not just large enterprises, have growing stores of data. Until now, however, Birst CEO Brad Peters said smaller companies have been at a competitive disadvantage because database and analytics solutions designed for terabytes of data have been out of their financial reach.

Birst wants to democratize Big Data. The provider of business intelligence software last month introduced an in-memory analytics database that, unlike some competitors, does not require specialized hardware or costly platform investments.

Now Birst, hoping to serve companies with even larger stores of information, has partnered with ParAccel, which offers columnar databases designed to speedily handle larger and more complex data workloads.

ParAccel competes with Netezza, Vertica, Greenplum and Aster Data, all of which were purchased in the past two years by larger companies trying to shore up their Big Data strategies. Some of those big companies, like IBM which bought Netezza in late 2010, also sell business intelligence software.

While those companies sell all the components for analyzing Big Data, Peters said customers still must undertake complicated integration work or pay third parties to do so.  In contrast, he said, Birst and ParAccel have done the integration heavy lifting to offer a preconfigured solution that is simpler to get up and running.

Ann All
Ann All

Public relations, digital marketing, journalism, copywriting. I have done it all so I am able to communicate any information in a professional manner. Recent work includes creating compelling digital content, and applying SEO strategies to increase website performance. I am a skilled copy editor who can manage budgets and people.

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