On Tuesday, Oracle announced plans to acquire Big Data player Endeca just weeks after unveiling its Big Data appliance featuring Apache Hadoop and an Oracle NoSQL Database. Endeca’s proprietary MDEX technology powers two products: (1) Endeca InFront; and (2) Endeca Latitude. Endeca InFront enables users to understand customer trends and histories by examining online pages viewed, search terms and conversion rates. Endeca Latitude delivers a business intelligence platform for running analytics on structured and unstructured data.
According to Endeca’s website, Endeca Latitude claims the following differentiators from traditional BI solutions:
• No Data Left Behind:
Endeca Latitude incorporates a range of structured and unstructured data including unstructured data from web searches and Facebook and Twitter feeds in addition to traditional, relationally structured data.
• Consumer Ease of Use
Whereas traditional BI is based around reports and dashboards, Latitude’s analytics are delivered through interactive, web-based applications that provide a greater range of user drill-down and customization options.
• Agile Delivery
Endeca Latitude claims faster customization of its product to enterprise requriements than that of its competitors Autonomy and Attivio. Moreover, Endeca Latitude allows for iterative refinement of its analytics through its interactive application that enables enhanced collaboration between technology and business stakeholders.
One of the distinctive features of Endeca’s MDEX analytics engine is its lack of a data schema. Instead of a predefined data model, MDEX leverages a Faceted Data Model in which the schema emerges and morphs in relation to the characteristics of the data. Endeca InFront will be integrated with the Oracle ATG commerce engine to deliver analytics that improve online customer experience and conversion rates. Endeca Latitude will take its place alongside Oracle’s suite of BI tools and its forthcoming Big Data Appliance to analyze massive amounts of structured and unstructured data.
According to a June press release, Endeca “was used to power one of the largest eDiscovery clusters in the world exceeding 20 billion objects for interactive discovery – comparable in size to leading web search indexes of a few years ago.” The company’s customers include IBM, IEEE, Toyota, Ford, Walmart, The Home Depot and The U.S. Department of Justice out of a total of 600. Oracle did not disclose the terms of the acquisition of the Cambridge, Massachusetts based company although GigaOm reports that Endeca took in $65 million in venture capital over the course of four capital raises. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of 2011.
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