In Plain Sight: Patented Aster Data SQL-MapReduce® Technology Opens Eyes to Big Data Opportunities

SAN CARLOS, Calif., June 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Next Big Thing in analytic business foresight began in 2005, when Mayank Bawa and Tasso Argyros were students at Stanford. Their dorm room conversations evolved into an innovative analytic processing framework today known as SQL-MapReduce® which brings the power of big data processing techniques to more business users than ever. The former Stanford student project has come a long way – and its innovators are excited to have received U.S. Patent #7966340 on June 21, 2011.  

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The patent was announced today by Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC), the world's largest company focused on big data analytics, data warehousing and integrated marketing management, which acquired Aster Data in April.  

"This patent is a validation of the tremendous value SQL-MapReduce brings to organizations, because it is the only technology of its kind on the planet: the one and only data analytic framework that combines the popular MapReduce™ software with the enterprise friendliness of SQL – making it much simpler for non-technical analysts to explore new business opportunities in the big data universe," said Mayank Bawa, vice president of development, Aster Data, now part of Teradata. "Companies adopting our patented SQL-MapReduce approach are finding it easier than ever to see, explore, and understand future possibilities across an infinite spectrum of new, multi-structured data sources which often go untapped within organizations."

SQL-MapReduce is a framework which enables fast, investigative analysis of complex information by data scientists and business analysts. It enables procedural expressions in software languages (such as Java, C#, Python, C++, and R) to be parallelized across a group of linked computers (compute cluster) and then activated for use (invoked) with standard SQL.  

Big data is a term applied to data sets whose size, variety, velocity, or complexity is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to efficiently capture, manage, and process. Examples include Web logs, sensor networks, social media, medical records and more. SQL-MapReduce provides insights from these multi-structured data sources that identify trends and market opportunities.

"This is the fulfillment of a dream – and yet the beginning a much greater dream – which is to open the doors of the big data universe to millions of business users across the world," said Bawa. "Leading customers have found tremendous value in new multi-structured data that was previously too difficult to analyze, or took too long to analyze at scale." Barnes & Noble, InsightExpress and other Aster Data customers have confirmed their success with SQL- MapReduce.

Aster Data first pioneered the analytics framework in 2008 and the popularity of MapReduce has since exploded, placing Aster Data in an industry-leading position. The patent confirms the SQL-MapReduce technology differentiation and protects Aster Data's leadership in the big data space.

"At a time when many vendors are talking about the future of big data analytics, Teradata and Aster Data already have a strong history of success – and now a patented trademark to protect and convey our unique capabilities to the market," said Tasso Argyros, vice president of product management and marketing, Aster. "This marks a milestone in our continuing innovation and collaboration with Teradata – to bring our MapReduce approach to the masses and in so doing, open more eyes to the realities of profitable revenue growth through big data analytics."

From the beginning, the Aster Data team's work focused on MapReduce in a SQL environment – making it easy to extend SQL with more expressive analytics and access via common BI tools. This allowed companies to analyze new multi-structured data types at scale without offloading to a separate analytic tool or system. SQL-MapReduce was the core technology which sparked a history of innovation and product releases which make big data analytics accessible to the enterprise. This has resulted in a number of firsts for the Aster nCluster platform:

• The first massively parallel analytic platform to support embedded analytic applications with SQL-MapReduce so businesses can dramatically speed processing of terabytes to petabytes of data, opening opportunities to deliver new interactive, big data applications
• The first visual integrated development environment (Aster Data Developer Express) with out-of-the-box SQL-MapReduce modules (part of the Aster Data Analytic Foundation) to make big data analytics faster and easier
• The first in bringing SQL-MapReduce to column store technology
• More recently, the first SQL-MapReduce developer community was formed to give data scientists and analysts ways to develop and share powerful MapReduce analytics

Relevant News Links

• Teradata Labs President Scott Gnau comments on Teradata-Aster collaboration
• More information about Teradata Aster analytics and platforms
• Teradata CTO Stephen Brobst discusses Teradata, Big Data, and Aster Data.
• Aster Data and Cloudera partner to couple analytics and Hadoop
• Big Data: It's Going Mainstream and It's Your Next Opportunity – TD Magazine
• By the year 2020 data volumes will expand 50 times, according to new IDC report
• McKinsey and Company report on the phenomenon of Big Data
• "What is Big Data and why should you care?" podcast - Listen

About Aster Data

Teradata's Aster Data Analytic Platform is the market-leading big data analytics solution. The Aster Data analytic platform embeds MapReduce analytic processing for deeper insights on new data sources and multi-structured data types to deliver analytic capabilities with breakthrough performance and scalability. Aster Data's solution utilizes Aster Data's patented SQL-MapReduce to parallelize the processing of data and applications and deliver rich analytic insights at scale. For more information visit www.asterdata.com.

About Teradata

Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) is the world's largest company focused on raising intelligence through data warehousing, big data analytics and integrated marketing management. Our customers trust Teradata's innovative products and services expertise to deliver measurable business value. Please visit teradata.com for details.

Teradata is a trademark or registered trademark of Teradata Corporation in the United States and other countries.

SOURCE Teradata Corporation