Data visualization is for more than just new educational programs on the History channel. With Big Data making its mark on end users in the enterprise, understanding the metadata becomes all the more important.  Visualization is one of the most helpful ways data can be represented, but distributing this formated information through the cloud’s countless applications can be risky business.  Pentaho’s on the case, with a fresh set of templates for it Instaview platform, a tool that helps data scientists become more productive by visualizing the data they work with.  The platform was introduced with the release of Business Analytics 4.8, the latest version of the firm’s flagship analytics and data integration product.

Pentaho’s templates are specialized add-ons that automate the administration of data streams, allowing users to focus their efforts on the important stuff: analyzing the metadata. Today the company released a template for Twitter, and said that it will extend support to a new platform every week over the course of the next month.

Pentaho promises to launch templates for MongoDB, the Amazon Redshift archiving service, Google Analytics, and Cloudera’s Impala, a real-time query engine that’s picking up steam.

A recent Big Data survey conducted by Pentaho found that two-thirds of respondents managed three or more data sources and almost half were using standard relational databases as well as Hadoop or NoSQL, points Richard Daley, founder and chief strategy officer, Pentaho Corporation. “Pentaho’s new Instaview templates reduce the complexity of managing these multiple data sources by offering a simple three-step process for choosing, preparing and analyzing big data, transforming the way companies access and analyze information.”

The news comes during this week’s Strata event, where we expect several Big Data announcements from large and small vendors alike.  As Big Data comes into its own as an industry, players like Pentaho have an unmatched opportunity to step up to the plate and deliver enterprise-ready solutions for data management.  Integration is the key for Pentaho, a topic of growing importance as Big Data implementation grows more commonplace.  Data sources are being mixed in order to deliver truly comprehensive BI services, and understanding the infrastructure and security support needed for this emerging market will be important for executives ready to apply Big Data tactics to their businesses.

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