Sybase breaks ‘new’ ground with ‘In-Database’ business analytics

Breaking at 2pm UK time this afternoon is news that Sybase’s IQ 15.1 column-based analytics server will ship with ‘in-database’ analytics functionality to allow developers and DBAs to run predictive analytics business logic directly inside the database.

This ‘new’ approach to extreme analytics is argued to open up a new gateway to performing critical drill-downs and predictive analysis in data-intensive environments. Previously, Sybase says that this work would have been impractical using traditional ‘outside the database’ methods.

To support this story, last night I interviewed Joydeep Das, a senior product manager at Sybase for his take on the news. Das told me that, "The Sybase IQ 15.1 release represents a positive progression for us in terms of enabling the rapid development and deployment of high performance analytics and data lifecycle management applications. The new ‘in-database’ analytics processing capabilities in this product enables organisations to deploy analytics to drive what we hope will be more profitable business decisions.”

In-database analytics is arguably (although I don’t think there’s too much of an argument to be had here) comparatively new ground and the most compelling part of this story. The ability to give software application developers the programming power to be able to move calculations into the data warehouse that would have otherwise been a straight drain on processing power and response time appears to be a sensible move.

Sybase’s Joydeep Das also told me, “The supporting products for Sybase IQ 15.1 such as the Workspace Data Analytics IDE with Eclipse plug-ins for rapid schema and data lifecycle modeling, application development and debugging, as well as the data movement and transformation tool - Sybase ETL - ensures fast time to value for data warehousing projects."

In the June 2009 report “Massive But Agile: Best Practices For Scaling The Next-Generation Enterprise Data Warehouse,” Senior Analyst James Kobielus of Forrester Research writes “[Information and Knowledge Management] professionals are adopting an emerging best practice known as “in-database analytics” […] Under this practice, data mining, predictive analysis and other compute-intensive analytic functions are migrating to the EDW platform. In-database DW analytics can either replace or supplement traditional analytics execution approaches.”

Sybase says that IQ 15.1 is the, “Only high performance column-based analytics server that supports hundreds of statistical and data mining functions, executed completely in-database and supporting hundreds of concurrent users at high performance levels.”

While this development for the IQ product may be interesting and admirable, Seth Grimes writing for IntelligentEnterprise.com late last year listed a string of companies working at this level and did not make reference to Sybase once. “A next-generation computational approach is earning front-line operational relevance for data warehouses, long a resource appropriate solely for back-office, strategic data analyses. Emerging in-database analytics exploits the programmability and parallel-processing capabilities of database engines from vendors Teradata, Netezza, Greenplum and Aster Data Systems,” said Grimes.

For my opinions on this news – I would say that running real-time predictive analytics directly inside a database should prove useful in areas like risk management and/or business process management. The suggestion that this might allow businesses to make operational decisions more efficiently and affordably appears to be fairly solid from my perspective.

As you can imagine, there’s a whole lot more to read on this subject on Sybase’s website and any number of the business analytics and computational logic forums that exist out there. In the interest of brevity I’ll conclude by saying that I do think this is fairly solid news.

Sybase is a company that I have followed since 2004 and I have been to several of their TechWave annual symposia over the years. Due to the company’s installed based in the financial market and defence (they like to be politically correct and refer to defence as ‘government’ which is just so Apple Pie America – but I kind of like that anyway) they are one of a increasingly small number of organisations currently reporting the most successful quarters in their corporate history, so they must be doing something right. Right?