IT Briefcase Exclusive Interview: Real Time Big Data Analytics with Elizabeth Edwards and John Crupi, JackBe

In the below interview, Elizabeth Edwards and John Crupi from JackBe offer expert advice for organizations looking to reduce analytic processing times and deliver meaningful data from throughout the enterprise in a manner that is both user-friendly and easy to understand.

• Q. How have you seen data management change over the last 10 years with the evolution of Big Data and Cloud Computing?

John:  The amount of data has gone up exponentially and the cost to store data has come down exponentially. Now, with technology such as Hadoop, we are about to see the costs of large data processing and especially analytics drop dramatically. Companies that have spent millions of dollars in the last decade using traditional databases to store very large datasets (because they didn’t have many options) and did very little in the way of analytics.

We’ve reached the tipping point where storing Big Data in traditional databases and data warehouses doesn’t make architectural and economic sense. Organizations are beginning to realize that Big Data storage, processing and analytics may be the “killer app” for the Cloud. It makes sense, because everything needed (initially) for Big Data can be done radically cheaper on the Cloud using Hadoop, such as:

– Storage for the massive amount of data is cheap

– Processing using many Cloud compute VMs is cheap

– Whether writing code or using Hadoop style databases for analytics puts it within reach of the masses at a fraction of the cost of using a proprietary analytics system

• Q. What advice can you offer to businesses trying to juggle the increased speed, volume, and variety of data that Big Data brings to the table?

Elizabeth: Avoid creating yet another silo. The risk in Big Data is that, without an easy way to tie it to other data and visualize the results, Big Data becomes just another data silo. Presto for BigMemory prevents Big Data from becoming a Big Silo by giving business users the tools and means to link the critical elements of Big Data to the rest of your enterprise data for real-time decision making.

• Q. What do you view as the ultimate business value of being able to analyze data in “real time” from anywhere and at any time of day?

Elizabeth: Many organizations don’t have the luxury to wait for months, weeks, days and even hours for information. They need information as it happens so they can make decisions “now.” Imagine the cost associated with waiting days for potential fraud information. That could cost an organization millions. Or image the potential catastrophic impact of not detecting a cyber attack as it happens. It only takes a few minutes for hackers to steal critical information which could potentially bankrupt your company.

It all comes down to how important is it for an organization to have real-time information. Is it just a nice to have or is it critical for survival and competitiveness.

• Q. How will JackBe’s recent partnership with Terracotta help organizations reduce analytic processing times and deliver meaningful data from throughout the enterprise in a manner that is both user-friendly and easy to understand?

John:  The Presto solution marries three critical data elements for decision making:

– Big Data

– Enterprise historical and transactional data

– Live data

All this data is valuable and is in different locations. The value isn’t in the independent data; it’s in ability to combine that data in meaningful ways. Apply this to real-time decisions and you need high performance in-memory data management like Terracotta BigMemory to enable Presto to preform analytics across vast amounts of data in a fraction of the time to get immediate insight and answers.

With on-the-fly data visualizations, data exploration and analytics, as well as in-memory processing and data streaming, Presto gives business users the ability to explore and find connections in real time.

• Q. How will this impact the evolution of data analytics within the context of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and how is JackBe working to keep this secure?

John: Don’t believe all the hype that enterprises are deploying enterprise mobile solutions like wild fire. The reality is, it’s just beginning. Phase one was to build native high-value (typically data light) mobile applications for niche use cases. But, the next wave of enterprise mobile computing is coming and it’s all based on data. JackBe provides a secure native App, called Presto Mobile (available on Apple’s App Store) which acts as a secure mobile portal that securely connects to your internal enterprise App Store and delivers high performing HTML5 data apps within the native Presto Mobile environment. We believe this is the most secure and agile way for enterprises to deploy data-driven mobile apps.

• Q. What industries do you feel will benefit most from this recent JackBe-Terracotta collaboration?

John: Any industry looking to pull value from Big Data can benefit. These areas in particular are ripe for real-time Big Data analytics:

– Fraud detection

– Network monitoring

– Operations improvement

– Capacity forecasting

Sales

– Customized cross-selling

– Location-based selling (offers to smartphones)

Customer experience improvement

– Sentiment trends

– Customer behavior

– Churn assessment

– Segmentation and targeting

– Customer lifecycle management

Elizabeth Edwards – Chief Marketing Officer

As CMO, Elizabeth focuses on JackBe’s corporate strategy, business development, marketing and product marketing. As part of the marketing operations, she drives the company’s media and industry relations, advertising, interactive programs, communications as well as market and customer research. Elizabeth has multi-faceted background in B-to-B technology marketing with experience in managing international teams and developing go-to-market strategies and pipeline building programs.

Prior to JackBe, Elizabeth served as Vice President, Global Field Marketing for a leading global provider of business process management software and solutions, where she helped grow the company from a start-up to an established firm with revenues of $75 million, now part of Open Text (NASDAQ: OTEX). She has held management positions Digex now part of Verizon Business (NYSE: VZ), and Manugistics now part of JDA (NASDAQ: JDAS). She is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park with a Bachelor of Science degree in Merchandising and Textile Marketing.

John Crupi – Chief Technology Officer

As CTO, John is entrusted with understanding market forces and the business drivers that impact JackBe’s product innovation and customer success. John has over 20 years of experience in OO and enterprise distributed computing.

Prior to JackBe, John was with Sun Microsystems, serving as a Distinguished Engineer and CTO for Sun’s Enterprise Web Services Practice. He is co-author of the highly popular Core J2EE Patterns book, his articles have been published in a variety of technology publications and he is a well-known blogger and speaker. John and has been featured on the Fox Business Network, named as a member of the Software Development Magazine’s Dream Team and has twice been selected as a Washingtonian Tech Titan. John earned a Master’s degree in engineering administration from George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park.