Tuesday's BITanium-Netezza product launch was revolutionary in both presentation and protocol. With a household appliance analogy to introduce attendees to the simplicity of the Netezza TwinFin Data Warehouse and Analytic Appliance and a fascinating presentation by Edcon's Business Integration Executive, Calvin Low, on results collected during four weeks of comparable tests, the audience - from data warehouse architects to marketers - was captivated.
Data warehousing and business intelligence analytics are rarely associated with simplicity. Just as a washing machine is purpose-built to execute the singular function of high performance clothing cleaning, so the Netezza TwinFin is designed to store and analyse vast quantities of data. And like a washing machine, the Netezza TwinFin is ready-to-go; plug in, load data and begin queries.
As an appliance that really works out-of-the-box, it integrates with all leading ETL, business intelligence and analytic applications through standard database interfaces. Need to wash more laundry and increase speed? Scale up by adding another appliance.
In the retail sector, vast transaction quantities amount to more than rands and cents. These numbers translate into customer purchasing behaviours; what they buy, when, where, how many and how often. This data guides orders, in-store stocks, shelf layout and targeted promotions to refined customer segmentation groups. Netezza was able to join two tables of 36 million and 298 million rows in less than three minutes versus five hours on the incumbent database in an Edcon test; this ability to analyse complex data aggregates is a marketer's utopia. Accessible high-speed data retrieval and analytics introduce true intelligence to businesses.
“We'd heard about the concept of 'appliance' but had no first-hand experience until we signed on to test drive the Netezza system,” says Calvin Low, Business Integration Executive - Edcon Group IT.
Revolutionising the way the capability of the Netezza TwinFin is demonstrated, BITanium offers prospective clients an on-site 'Test Drive' as a proof of concept (POC). The Netezza TwinFin appliance is installed parallel to an existing data warehouse allowing for comparable tests on identical data.
“Our confidence in our product is as great as its performance,” says BITanium's Managing Director, Chris O'Connell. “We can do this because of Netezza's simplicity. It took only two days to install the appliance and have it load ready at Edcon and as few new skills were required, Calvin's team could immediately start using our appliance. The results from their comparable tests speak for themselves - in some cases run times improved by thousands of percent.”
This out-of-the-box Netezza appliance, BITanium's try-before-you-buy offering and clients who present their experience at a product launch are revolutionary. Unrestricted by limitations of current systems, the Netezza TwinFin simplifies data warehousing, enables advanced analytics in minutes and boosts performance to open a magnitude of business intelligence applications that were previously unimaginable.
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