Vibrant Solutions Selects Netezza Performance Server

Vibrant Solutions is the worldwide leader in cost and revenue management for telecommunications providers. Its software and services increase efficiencies, optimize networks and reduce costs for telecommunications providers, helping them save millions annually. Vibrant is using Netezza Performance Server (NPS) 8100 in its own organization and is leveraging its unique price/performance benefits to enable a whole new generation of assurance solutions that weren’t previously possible with an older, inefficient and expensive patchwork of database, server and storage technologies. Vibrant’s latest solution – Network Usage Assurance (NUA) – was recently recognized at Telestrategies’ Revenue Assurance and Margin Management as the industry’s first service provider offering to detect billing event leakage and discrepancies.

"Today’s telecommunications companies are moving full-steam ahead with cost and revenue management projects that are worth millions of dollars to the bottom line. Unfortunately, shrinking budgets, an explosion in data and very little time to capitalize on this information can hinder these efforts," said Rick Mahuson, CTO of Vibrant Solutions. "Netezza removed the price/performance bottleneck, making it possible to reduce the analysis of billions of call detail records from more than 36 hours to just 26 minutes, without a multi- million-dollar, forklift upgrade to our systems. Our customers will be able to do things they couldn’t do before, making it fast and affordable to revisit data warehousing initiatives and implement a new generation of more effective cost and revenue assurance operations."

The NPS appliance delivers 10 to 20 times the performance for large, complex and constantly growing BI efforts at half the cost of existing systems. Netezza started with a clean sheet of paper and designed a breakthrough architecture, asymmetric massively parallel processing (AMPP). It combines servers, storage and database into a single powerful and scalable appliance created from the outset to process queries faster and enable complex data analysis that was not previously possible because of large and fast-growing data sizes. This new architecture shatters traditional performance benchmarks and many of the technical roadblocks that paralyze today’s patchwork of general-purpose offerings.

Spectra Marketing Increases ROI with SAS Automated Data Warehousing Job Scheduling

Spectra, Inc. is a division of VNU, the largest marketing information services company in the world. Spectra's premiere suite of consumer targeting solutions enables clients within the fast-moving consumer goods industry to develop complete profiles of their most-valued consumer. In turn, clients can assess how their target consumer's lifestyle, life stage and attitude impact consumer-buying decisions and properly define their marketing strategies. Spactra integrated Platform JobScheduler with SAS/Warehouse Administrator software to generate significant return on investment (ROI).

The integration of Platform JobScheduler into the warehousing process decreases the time and resources required to manage data warehouses. With SAS, Spectra analyzes and monitors distributed application workloads across the enterprise for production operations from a single point of control, thus reducing the costs of developing, deploying and maintaining enterprise production operations. In addition to cutting operational costs, Spectra reduced the time required for data conversion when they implemented a new collection system; a process that once took weeks now only takes days.

"Data warehousing is critical to us. Spectra serves the fast-moving consumer goods industry with consumer-centric marketing solutions, creating marketing ROI by measuring the consumer behavior impact of demand-side spending," said Dennis Klos, vice president of data development and production, Spectra Marketing. "SAS improved reliability of extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of data – making the information in our warehouse highly consistent and available for use in our information products and in delivery to our customers. As a company that operates 24x7, the integrated job scheduling and ETL functionality allowed us to reduce the time-to-market required for new processes. In turn, this enabled us to significantly speed delivery of critical information to sister companies, ACNielsen, VNU Entertainment and other clients."

SAS/Warehouse Administrator gives information technology (IT) professionals a sophisticated tool to design and manage data warehouses. SAS/Warehouse Administrator takes full advantage of Platform JobScheduler to enable users to achieve quicker time to results by enabling the use of distributed processors to run parallel jobs, controlling access to limited computer resources, and automating the execution of the ETL process. Platform JobScheduler also provides a single user interface to heterogeneous computer systems, centralized resource provisioning using queue priorities and job preemption, and a reliable job scheduling environment enabled by calendar-based and interjob dependencies.

SAS/Warehouse Administrator captures and integrates data, and the integration of the Platform JobScheduler automates and distributes job flow automatically over any existing hardware resource to optimize the ETL process. By applying Platform's workload management and distributed management computing technology, IT departments can schedule, analyze and monitor job flow with minimal human interaction to deliver predictable results.

Virginia Tech Speeds Data Warehouse Development and Business Intelligence Delivery with Ascential DataStage

Virginia Tech has deployed Ascential DataStage to build an enterprise data warehouse, thereby providing a university-wide management view of operations that currently spans its human resources, finance, admissions and alumni development areas.

Through the deployment of DataStage, Virginia Tech is able to give its diverse user community useful business views of data that span multiple operations and time periods. Virginia Tech uses DataStage to extract, transform and load (ETL) daily update activity from the university's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system into its own in-house developed data warehouse. Virginia Tech's ERP system (SCT Banner) is a suite of Oracle-based software applications for higher education administration.

During the DataStage ETL process, SCT Banner data is restructured to create an integrated data warehouse that supports effective management analysis and reporting. DataStage's graphical user interface and efficient data handling facilities have enabled Virginia Tech to reduce its data warehouse development time by at least fifty percent. DataStage also streamlines the university's entire ETL process so that it may be completed within a fixed window of time each night.

"University administrators are thrilled with the business intelligence our data warehouse affords them and their staff, and they are continually asking for more data marts to be added," said Martisha Graham, data architect and DataStage administrator at Virginia Tech. "We could not process the volumes of data in our warehouse in the amount of time it has taken and also continue to grow without integration software like Ascential DataStage."

Schwan’s Technology Group Expands Services Using Sagent's Centrus AddressBroker

"For more than a decade, Schwan's Technology Group has been delivering underwriting information services to the automobile insurance industry, and we wanted to leverage this experience to expand into products that can also serve our customers on the homeowner's side of the business," said Larry Lautt, president of Schwan's Technology Group. "Exact location of the insured home is one of the most requested pieces of homeowner information, and it's critical to our clients that this information be as accurate as possible. We selected Sagent as our technology partner because AddressBroker meets our requirements for an accurate, scalable geocoding and geographic analysis engine."

AddressBroker is a set of high-level programming interfaces that perform address standardization, geocoding, demographic enhancement and spatial analysis. This technology is ideal for businesses interested in fast, flexible implementation of Sagent's Centrus libraries – the tools for maximizing the accuracy and value of customer and prospect data.

Federal Agency Will Use Business Objects to Provide Homeland Security Extranet

The U.S.Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is a federal science-based law enforcement agency mandated to protect public health. One of the largest agencies in the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the FDA employs more than 9,000 professionals in a broad range of responsibilities including product review and monitoring; standards and regulations; scientific research, and enforcement. The agency has 12 offices and centers, all of which will be using Business Objects in functional and mission-critical areas.

The FDA has chosen Business Objects as its enterprise-wide BI standard. The FDA will use Business Objects to access, analyze and share information throughout the federal agency. The selection of Business Objects as the enterprise standard is the latest step in the FDA's evolving relationship with Business Objects and adoption of BI technology. A customer since 1999, the FDA has recently experienced an increased demand for reporting and analytic applications across the agency. Anticipating an even greater demand for data in the coming years, the FDA recently decided to consolidate all of its BI projects with one vendor.

The Business Objects platform will help the FDA serve both internal and external audiences. Given the agency's broad mandate and ties to other government entities, it is critical that the FDA has the capabilities to share important information with external agencies. For example, the FDA's Office of Regulatory Affairs will be using Business Objects to provide an extranet for a homeland security surveillance application. The extranet will provide information to key state, local, and national government bodies on serious outbreaks of disease that are believed to be food-related. Target users include FDA employees, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense.

In addition to the homeland security application, Business Objects will be used to monitor the shipment of food and drugs into U.S. ports, to monitor drug submission applications to the agency and to monitor adverse event information related to biologics, cosmetics,and dietary supplements. The FDA also uses Business Objects in several key administrative functions. For example, Business Objects will be used for all query, reporting and analysis for Oracle Financials, the FDA's soon-to-be implemented financial system and for Gelco Travel Manager, the agency's enterprise-wide expense management system.

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