Push to Extend Use of Data Tools Continues

An updated of an overarching analytics platform continues the trend toward breaking down organizational barriers to expand access to data crunching technologies beyond just data analysts.

San Francisco-based Alpine Data Labs said the latest version of its Chorus analytics platform is intended to help enterprises unify data access and control into a single environment. The Chorus 5.0 release is also said to add functionality that allows corporate managers to leverage their analytics tools to promote collaboration.

The updated version also includes an extensible framework designed to allow data scientists and analysts to integrate technologies like R and Spark. The company added that the latest Chorus release includes access, discovery and management parity across various Hadoop distributions, including Cloudera, HortonWorks, MapR and Pivotal.

It also adds access to major database platforms from Oracle, Teradata and Microsoft SQL Server.

The company said the new release is part of its overarching strategy of making machine learning accessible “at web scale” across organizations. “To operationalize meaningful insights, customers require a platform that enables a new engagement model between analytics, people and business processes,” Alpine Data President and CEO Joe Otto, asserted in a statement.

Hence, the company claims the latest release of it Chorus analytics platform provides new monitoring and operational capabilities with a consistent interface as a way to boost collaboration across an enterprise.

Chorus 5.0 also includes support for non-Hadoop sources as a way to drive “in-cluster” analytics processing to a broader set of data sources.

Rather than replacing data tools, the company also claims its open framework provides a platform for integrating and managing data mining and statistical analysis tools to deliver a platform that can be scaled across an organization.

Alpine Data cites its integration of R as an example of how the framework extends the 5.0 platform’s use to a larger number of new data users and use cases. The platform allows data scientists to drop their code into existing or new Chorus workflows. That is said to allow combining them with machine learning algorithms and models that do not use R.

Alpine Data claims that added functionality provides a roadmap for extending the use of languages like R.

Greenplum spin-off Alpine Data Labs is best known as a developer of proprietary algorithms that crunch vast data sets in Hadoop and other big data platforms. The company launched its initial version of Chorus in February 2014, borrowing ideas from the social media world for the purpose of bringing together all the big data stakeholders in an organization.

At that time, Alpine Data said it was counting on partners to build adapters for accessing big data analytic products–from ETL tools to visualization and reporting tools–within the Chorus product.

A free trial of Chorus 5.0 is available here.

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