German Software Leader Outlines Platform Strategy

Today Germany IT giant, Software AG, announced its strategy for tackling the next generation of big data management with the bold claim that they’ll be able to provide a platform that is up to 1,000 times faster than current comparable technologies.

While it may not be the most common company to encounter stateside, the company is among Germany and Europe’s software elite with revenue this past year in the billion dollar territory and a firm foothold in the global business process management camp.

All of this (and perhaps especially their strength in Europe now) has made their entry into the big data management race (beginning with their in-memory offering) significant.

At the heart of this statement is the company’s in-memory BigMemory technology, which came to them as part of their acquisition of Terracotta.

The company claims this platform is already being used in a number of large enterprise settings that are addressing multi-terabyte problems. Having the in-memory boost from BigMemory at the core of the new platform means that they will be able to tackle needs for rapid in-flight event stream processing as well as allow for handling of data from any number of sources and types (analytic, relational, Hadoop, etc.)

The Hanover-based, public company says their new Next-Generation Data Management Platform offering, which leverages their BigMemory technology to tap into terabytes of diverse data types, can enable real-time access to vast wells of corporate data, thus driving faster business decisions. According to the company’s statement about the news, this real-time visibility into operational business activities will also enable companies to design new, innovative and highly flexible business processes.

In addition to offering rapid data access, Software AG says their platform will also integrate in-stream business event processing so that customers gain maximum real-time business intelligence from their data for a competitive advantage.

Another key to the platform is the way the company uses traditional data management approaches, including the proliferation of data silos exacerbated by new database types. By integrating its in-memory and event processing technologies into a single platform, performance challenges can be addressed. Also, aside from the in-memory angle, the company says this next generation platform will interface with existing databases, a range of new data streams and leading-edge analytic tools.

As the company’s CEO, Karl-Heinz Streibich, stated, “Immediate access to large amounts of data and its analysis in real time increases transparency enabling quick decisions and short reaction times. This enables organizations to respond to market changes immediately and realize significant competitive advantages. High speed and scalability in the analysis of large volumes of data is a critical success factor for companies,”

Software AG’s BigMemory product is currently deployed at many large enterprise customers for multi-terabyte in-memory use cases. The company will build on BigMemory with capabilities that include in-flight processing of event streams and services for data profiling and aggregation, making real-time business analytics possible. In addition, the company will enable the processing of data from all data environments-transactional, analytic, relational/non-relational, Hadoop/NoSQL and social-in a single in-memory store.  ;

According to Software AG CTO, Wolfram Jost, the in-memory approach “provides low latency access to huge volumes of data to both enterprise applications and analytics and also interfaces with a range of new and legacy data stores and analytical tools.” As he said, this provides “a bridge between the IT of today and tomorrow.”

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