Data warehouse firms Netezza joins Attivio

BOSTON, US: Netezza Corporation, player in data warehouse, analytic and monitoring appliances, and Attivio Inc., a unified information access (UIA) software provider, have entered into a strategic agreement to develop and offer a solution that integrates unstructured content with the structured data that traditionally resides in a data warehouse. The announcement was made  by Jim Baum, president and CEO of Netezza, at the start of Netezza’s 2010 Enzee Universe User Conference taking place this week at the Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston.

“We introduced the world's first data warehouse appliance and challenged the status quo,” Baum stated. “And now, driven by our customers, we are shaping solutions to solve bigger, more complex enterprise-wide challenges. With the explosion in volume and variety of unstructured information driven, particularly, by the Internet and social networking, we’ve heard a clear demand for a unified approach that can scale from fairly small implementations all the way to petabyte deployments. This relationship with Attivio brings an entirely new ability to analyze and incorporate unstructured content within the data warehouse.”

Most technologies treat structured, semi-structured and unstructured data independently, managing different data types in silos where their full value is unrealized and unattainable. Netezza’s initiative with Attivio, to be discussed in two conference sessions, will deliver unified information access to structured and unstructured information managed within the same appliance and make the unified information available for query and analysis from one interface. Event participants will be invited to join a pilot beta test program for the new solution.

“Enterprises increasingly need a combined view of their entire information landscape where both precise and relevant answers are dictated by the context of the question, not by the source or structure of the information,” said Ali Riaz, CEO at Attivio. “UIA effectively solves the problem of information isolation that limits business agility, and we are delighted to partner with Netezza to bring this capability to their customers.”

“As global markets move faster and information buried in documents, emails, websites and social media becomes increasingly important, companies need to quickly and efficiently find a way to correlate what people do (in structured data) with what they say (in unstructured content),” commented Dan Vesset, vice president, Business Analytics at IDC, the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. “Unified information access and analysis improves the return on information by delivering broader, deeper, and more-timely insight. The combined knowledge and expertise of Netezza and Attivio should further accelerate the business impact of UIA.”