theCUBE Live at Hadoop World 2014

Hadoop stands as a uniquely powerful tool for cost-effectively ingesting and processing vast amounts of unstructured information, but it doesn’t provide a means of delivering the resulting insights to users in the here and now. MapR Technologies Inc. moved the industry a step closer towards addressing that need last week after having its commercial version of the open-source batch processing engine certified for use with MongoDB.

The database is designed to power modern web services handling the same kind of non-relational workloads Hadoop was created to process, making the two technologies a natural fit. Joint customers can now move information from their MongoDB instances into the framework for advanced analysis, optionally using the Hive data warehousing or Pig abstraction components, and incorporate the results back into their applications all without any manual rewrites. Plus, a cluster running MapR’s distro can double as a cost-effective backup destination.

Actian Corp. hopes to bring the same kind of flexibility to its flagship analytics platform with addition of support for SPARQLverse, another new-generation database that has been making waves lately. Described as the highest-performing solution of its kind, the in-memory triple store exposes information as entities and relationships, which allows decision-makers to dig into patterns might normally take considerable time to uncover in an interactive fashion. The upgrade makes Actian’s software more attractive for a wide range of use cases, from detecting fraud to optimizing ads.

The enterprise is just beginning to recognize the potential that lies in the ability to act on data changes in real-time, but the vendor community is already leaping ahead to the next paradigm: predictive analytics. Cloud services powerhouse Workday Inc. became the latest to jump into the fray last week with the revelation of plans for a portfolio of analytic applications that it envisions will help human resources and financial professionals embrace a more proactive stance towards their work.

The company promises that the upcoming “Insight Apps” will allow organizations to discover talent more effectively and prepare for a variety of future business scenarios such a top performer considering to jump ship. Underpinning the portfolio is machine learning functionality that will improve the accuracy of predictions over time as more data is added to the mix. The first solutions in the portfolio are set to begin rolling out next year.