Bill McColl

Cloudcel on Ulitzer Back in 1985, the world was pre-web, data volumes were small, and no one was grappling with information overload. Relational databases and the shiny new SQL query language were just about perfect for this era. At work, 100% of the data required by employees was internal business data, the data was highly structured, and was organized in simple tables. Users would pull data from the database when they realized they needed it. Fast forward to 2010. Today, everyone is grappling constantly with information overload, both in their work and in their social life. Most data today is unstructured, and most of it is in files, streams or feeds, rather than in structured tables. Many of the data streams are realtime, and constantly changing. At work, most of the d... (more)

Cloud Analytics Checklist

Cloud Data Analytics on Ulitzer In the previous article we looked at how realtime cloud analytics looks set to disrupt the $25B SQL/OLAP sector of the IT industry. What are users looking for from a next-generation post-SQL/OLAP enterprise analytics solution? Let's look at the requirements: Realtime + Historical Data. In addition to analyzing (historical) data held in databases (Oracle, S... (more)

Cloud Analytics

Cloud Data Analytics on Ulitzer Cloud analytics is hot. Gartner's top two strategic technologies for the enterprise in 2010 are cloud computing and advanced analytics. In their words "Technologies you can't afford to ignore". Venture capitalist Ann Winblad, in a recent video, points out that the coming era of realtime cloud analytics will have a revolutionary impact on the enterprise, cr... (more)

Cloud Analytics: Dataflow vs Databases

For twenty years, analytics has been viewed as just one specific area within the broader relational database industry. So, analytics has meant databases. Today that view is changing. Over the past year or so, a new movement, the "NoSQL" movement has emerged promoting the advantages of doing a variety of kinds of analytics without using any relational database technologies at all. Whatever ... (more)

Got Excel? Go Cloud in 2010

Cloudcel on Ulitzer At the recent Hadoop World conference, Doug Cutting, Hadoop Project Founder, remarked that "The Dream" was to provide non-programmers with the power of parallel cloud computing tools such as MapReduce and Hadoop, via simple, easy-to-use spreadsheet-like interfaces. With Cloudcel, the non-programmers of the world (and the programmers too!) can "live that dream" today. ... (more)