MIS Research In-memory Analytics

What is In-memory Analytics?

After doing some research, I found out that In-memory analytics is an enterprise architecture framework solution used to enhance business intelligence reporting by querying data from system memory, versus the traditional hard disk drive medium. I also found out that using this approach significantly reduces querying time in an effort to facilitate efficient business decisions. In-memory analytics are important in todays technical society because in addition to providing incredibly fast query response times, in-memory analytics can reduce or eliminate the need for data indexing and storing pre-aggregated data in OLAP cubes or aggregate tables.  This reduces IT costs and allows faster implementation of BI and analytic applications. It is anticipated that as BI and analytic applications embrace in-memory analytics, traditional data warehouses may eventually be used only for data that is not queried frequently.

 

How does it relate to class?

In-Memory Analytics relates to the material covered in class because it is relevant to how data is stored and queried. In class, we learned about data cubes and data warehouses and how those information systems store data, and how it can be cumbersome to search for data when there is a lot of data is stored. However, in-memory analytics can and most likely will take the place of these large and slow data warehouses. In-Memory Analytics also relates to other topics discussed in class such as storing and gathering data with SQL. SAS also has in-memory data analytics systems. This shows that there are multiple ways to store data in a database.

 

Real world example

An example of how in-memory analytics is applied in the real world occurred in 2011 when IBM invented a supercomputer – Watson, won a Jeopardy match against two of the previous Jeopardy champions. During a two-day game Watson accumulated $77,147. Watson consists of “10 racks of 10 Power 750 servers”, but its main strength is the in-memory analytics power. Having 15 terabytes of RAM it achieved less than 3 second response time when answering Trebek’s questions. Data necessary for Jeopardy was stored inside Watson’s memory, and “he” wasn’t connected to the Internet at that time. This example shows the effectiveness of in-memory analytics tool applied in practice.

 

Works Cited

“IBM’s Watson: 16 Things You May Not Know About Its Hardware Muscle.” – IT Infrastructure. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.

“In-memory Analytics.” In-memory Analytics. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.

“The Ins And Outs Of In-Memory Analytics – InformationWeek.” InformationWeek. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.

“What Is In-memory Analytics ? – Definition from WhatIs.com.” SearchBusinessAnalytics. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.