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November 22, 2016

Embattled Redshift Gets Analytics Backing

(garriphoto/Shutterstock)

Amazon Web Services’ Redshift data warehouse service got some much needed support this week with a partnership between a data management for analytics specialist and a tool developer aimed at helping RedShift users automate their analytics infrastructure.

San Francisco-based Panoply.io said Tuesday (Nov. 22) it has partnered with Stitch and its ETL service that helps developers connect their databases and software services and then replicates them in a data warehouse.

The partners claimed the integration would allow faster access to managed Redshift instances by allowing users of the Stitch ETL service to connect with Panoply.io’s data warehouse. The platform will be demonstrated at next week’s AWS (NASDAQ: AMZN) re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

The partnership responds to recent challenges to Redshift by database analytics competitors such as Cloudera and Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) who claimed Redshift is slow and expensive compared to their platforms. For example, Cloudera recently claimed its analytics database running on Apache Impala was 22 percent cheaper than Redshift when querying data stored in AWS Simple Cloud Storage Service using cloud native tools.

Apache Impala is an open source incubator project designed to develop a distributed SQL query engine for Hadoop.

Meanwhile, Panoply.io and Stitch declared their partnership would allow “companies of all sizes to provision and populate a data warehouse in minutes.”

Cloud-based data warehouses such as AWS Redshift are intended to speed access to data analytics tools and business intelligence, especially for medium-sized companies seeking to expand their data infrastructure. Stitch’s ETL service is designed to help shift the contents of databases such as MySQL and MongoDB along with software services from Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) and others to cloud data warehouses.

The service also allows developers to consolidate data for analysts without relying on APIs, scripting or data wrangling. The collaboration with Panoply.io takes the process a step further by provisioning instances on Redshift. The company’s data analytics management tools leverage machine learning and natural language processing to help virtualize and automate cloud infrastructure such as Redshift used as an analytics platform.

Panoply.io uses machine learning, for example, to analyze database query patterns, configuration and metadata to boost the capability of data analytics infrastructure. Among the startup’s investors is Intel Capital (NASDAQ: INTC).

Stitch, which was launched in August as a standalone ETL service, evolved out of a business intelligence platform developed by RJMetrics, which was acquired earlier this year. The new Stitch service connects data sources and then streams it to a warehouse.

The new Redshift tools and services arrive as the AWS data warehouse service is being challenged by Oracle and others who are seeking to gain a foothold in the market for cloud database and application workloads. Oracle declared in September it would challenge AWS with an upgraded cloud infrastructure. One goal is enticing developers to run applications such as data analytics in its datacenters.

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