| Issue 1, 2013 | Download pdf |
TERRACOTTA IN-GENIUS
Today’s business decisions require volumes, velocities and varieties of insight. Insight that comes from sophisticated actionable analytics harnessing vast amounts of real-time data in memory. Terracotta In-Genius, introduced at CeBIT, is a universal platform capable of reading data from anywhere, creating actionable intelligence dynamically and delivering it to all of the places within a business where it can be applied to affect better business outcomes.
Unthinkable Applications
The term “Big Data” is frequently used today to refer to volume, specifically the storage and access of data sets in the terabyte-and-higher realm. With ever increasing volumes of data being created—2.5 quintillion bytes per day, by some estimates—it’s no wonder that Big Data receives so much press. But volume is only part of the picture. Two additional facets must be considered: velocity and variety. Velocity refers to the speed of data accessibility, which gets increasingly quicker, moving from seconds to milliseconds to microseconds. Variety explores the multi-directional exchange of data, from traditional email and web transactions to telemetry and sensor inputs as well as social media and mobile outputs.
Unthinkable Applications operate at the intersection of volume, velocity and variety, working with existing data structures to extract more intelligence and creating business value by bringing insight and intelligence back to the transactional data be that logistical, customer relationship or financial.
Introducing Terracotta In-Genius
Terracotta In-Genius is the first platform of its kind that allows businesses to build Unthinkable Applications. Terracotta In-Genius harnesses the power of in-memory data management, with event stream processing and messaging to deliver real-time insights. Enterprise, web and mobile applications integrate with an in-memory big data platform providing low-latency messaging and complex event processing of data from any and all sources the business relies upon.
New pattern matching and analytic models create real-time notifications and socially aware analysis to generate actionable insight that could not have been imagined previously. Terracotta In-Genius is not simply another way to manage existing business processes; rather, it is an entirely new set of tools for new kinds of decisions and planning – creating applications that were never possible before.
When people talk about the importance of technology being scalable, this generally refers to performance. Terracotta In-Genius focus on data scalability (massive volume, diverse data, and fast predictable access to dynamic data) and providing information from this data that the business can leverage in real time.
Large data stores are typically processed in batches, and the resulting analytics are long-running – taking many minutes or hours. Often business use vast processors that churn through data overnight and deliver next-day reports. With Terracotta In-Genius, data streams are combined and processed immediately to provide real-time intelligence, layering information from existing transactional systems along with newer sources such as sensor and social media activity.
Architecture
Traditionally, customers requiring this sort of functionality had to glue together disparate technologies, but with Terracotta In-Genius’s in-memory data platform all functions are tightly integrated, providing immediate business benefit and linear scalability.
Since Terracotta In-Genius isn’t an appliance, it doesn’t force the addition of expensive hardware into the datacenter. Its collection of tightly integrated software components can be utilized individually or as a group. Terracotta In-Genius is therefore a universal platform capable of reading data from anywhere, creating actionable intelligence dynamically and delivering it to all of the places within a business where it can be applied to affect better business outcomes.
FIGURE 1: The In-Genius Architecture is a collection of tightly integrated components
Data platform
Terracotta In-Genius enables data to be stored in memory with BigMemory, the revolutionary Terracotta technology that provides predictable high-performance data access at scale. BigMemory is designed to allow businesses to store all application data in-memory for real-time processing and analytics, enabling faster and more efficient transactions as well as significant reductions in IT overhead. Bringing data from traditional DBMS structures, Hadoop, OLAP and other business silos to a single repository opens a new world of possibility for the intersection of that data into meaningful patterns for insight.
Low-latency messaging
Low-latency messaging enables high-volume applications to communicate in microseconds with each other and with the data stores they read from and write to. The Terracotta In-Genius messaging component is provided by Nirvana, which also enables messaging from Terracotta In-Genius to devices of all kind, including mobile, GPS and point-of-sale.
Event processing
Complex Event Processing (CEP), also known as stream processing, is the mechanism by which Terracotta In-Genius filters, correlates and aggregates data streams in memory and on-the-fly. The CEP engine, which is also used in webMethods Business Events, continuously looks for patterns and derives meaningful information out of seemingly unrelated event data. Most interestingly, it allows for the combination of data-in-motion with data-at-rest. Business-critical events can be consumed and produced for reporting, further analysis and action. Using industry-standard SQL to define business logic allows analysis of live data in the context of historical data to continuously explore patterns and develop instinctive intelligence about those patterns.
Mobile and web applications
On top of the data platform sits the messaging layer, updating web, mobile, point-of-sale, GPS and other applications in real-time as intelligence materializes and flows through the system. An analytics dashboard will also serve as a destination for important notifications and reports, interfacing with Terracotta In-Genius and other business intelligence systems.
Be In-Genius and Do More
Terracotta In-Genius is more than the sum of these parts. The combined power of a tightly integrated in-memory storage, processing, messaging and analytics at scale removes limitations that in the past have prevented businesses from making the most of their data. Terracotta In-Genius is a platform which makes previously unthinkable application development a reality. Uncover the unique patterns and hidden intelligence in data to reveal opportunities for innovation, serendipity and transformation. Ask your sales representative about Terracotta In-Genius today.