IBM Updates DB2, InfoSphere Warehouse 10 for Big Data

IBM continues to assist customers with big data issues after it released updated DB2 database software, and InfoSphere Warehouse 10.

The new software is based on innovations from IBM labs that continuously access, compress and analyze data, freeing up IT staff to work on higher-value tasks such as big data and business analytics, IBM said. Indeed, over the past four years, more than 100 clients, 200 business partners, and hundreds of experts from IBM Research and Software Development Labs around the world collaborated to develop the new software.

DB2 And InfoSphere

To help clients meet the increasing challenges of big data, IBM announced DB2 10 and InfoSphere Warehouse 10 software, which integrates with big data systems, automatically compresses data into tighter spaces to prevent storage sprawl, and slices information from the past, present and future to eliminate expensive application code.

The software addresses business opportunities made possible by the rise of mobile, social and cloud computing by automating the flow of data between new applications for big data and business analytics with minimal human intervention. These applications require new kinds of data to be instantly available on a scale and pace not previously experienced.

During testing, clients performed data warehouse queries up to 10 times faster to speed up decision making, freed up storage space up to 90 percent to dramatically reduce storage sprawl, and easily migrated data from expensive Oracle Database to IBM DB2 software with 98 percent code compatibility that didn’t require changing the data itself or retraining staff.

Using the new software, IBM customers can access big data for deeper insights. Big data integration and real-time data analysis provides faster insights from unstructured data, such as social networking information or text from mobile devices. Insights from Hadoop-based systems are now easily integrated with real-time analysis of structured data in the warehouse to enable better and faster business decisions, IBM said.

The new software speeds up business processes and lowers data management costs. Adaptive Compression and Multi-Temperature Data Management instantly compresses data to make it easier for business applications to use it and place it into the most effective storage, IBM said. Compression speeds up the flow and better manages big data for use by analytics applications. IBM’s new software automatically assesses how frequently data is needed and moves it to cost-effective storage based on how “hot” or “cold” it is.

Decision Making

Moreover, the new software enables users to look into the past and future to improve decision making. Time Travel Query enables easier access to data at any point in time.

For example, an online travel agency can automatically detect inconsistencies in itineraries such as a hotel booked in Rome for eight days while a car is reserved in New York City for three of those days, IBM said. Previously, database administrators and application developers had to write complex code to uncover this relationship.

“Today’s growing data volumes make it tougher for clients to access the right data when they need it to stay competitive,” said Arvind Krishna, general manager of IBM Information Management, in a statement. “IBM has advanced database and data warehouse technology to the point where data management can be automated and insights shared more broadly than ever before, freeing up decision makers and IT staff to focus on business growth.”