The analytics ecosystem got bigger last week with the addition of yet more options for processing the new kinds of unstructured data flowing into the enterprise. Hewlett-Packard Co. made the loudest splash after launching a cloud-base platform designed to ingest transmissions from emerging categories of connected devices.

The service promises to tame the vast amounts of of traffic crisscrossing the digital grid with capabilities for identifying useful patterns in machine-to-machine chatter and propagating changes across the millions of individual nodes. Complementing the core functionality are value-added applications geared toward specific use cases such as power management and lighting automation.

That horizontal strategy is HP’s attempt to differentiate from the other purpose-built analytic platforms offering to help organizations reign in their fast-growing networks of connected devices. The company is fighting an uphill battle against better-established rivals, but it’s not the first nor the last to take a shot at an already saturated segment.

Online auctioning giant eBay Inc. pulled off a similar gambit around the same time that HP introduced its platform with the launch of a real-time analytics framework representing the fourth of its kind to have been contributed to the open-source ecosystem in as many years. Pulsar competes with projects that have been around longer and boast significantly more community support.

But as is the case with HP’s new service, it packs some unique features that stand more than a fair chance to challenge the incumbents. The engine leverages a well-regarded event processing technology called Esper to execute queries and exposes information similarly to a relational database so that business workers don’t have to learn any new skills to search for insights.

The launch came as another part of the open-source community marked the first stable release of HBase. The columnar store has been in the making for seven long years that saw the project evolve from an internal initiative at an obscure Microsoft subsidiary to a lynchpin of some of the world’s most popular services, including none other than eBay. The new version adds to the appeal of the system with a streamlined interface and better availability.