InsightEdge Platform and XAP 14.5

When W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality evolution, said “In God we trust; all others bring data,” he was referring to the need for descriptive and diagnostic analytics, which statisticians used for quality management and continuous improvement. This trend has evolved to more sophisticated predictive analytics that are driving business intelligence (BI). Technological advances continue to drive big data and insight-driven transformation initiatives with increasingly sophisticated analytic algorithms, providing a springboard for the next evolutionary jump to proactive analytics. Business applications are beginning to leverage predictive analytics, using artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), without requiring constant human intervention.

Figure 1: Evolution of Analytics from BI to AI

Figure 1: Evolution of Analytics from BI to AI (source: Optix Solutions)

Today, data science involves collecting structured and unstructured data and processing this information for use in a broad array of AI applications, including machine learning and deep learning. Both data and AI applications can live wherever is best for your business needs, ranging from on-premise to hybrid cloud, full cloud, and even multi-cloud environments.

GigaSpaces’ InsightEdge Platform is designed to support the enterprise’s big data, analytics, and environment requirements. To that effect, release 14.5 continues our drive to simplify deployment and improve usability of our core products. We are proud of the latest InsightEdge enhancements for BI and data interaction, and synergetic partnerships with technology leaders in the form of innovative native cloud/hybrid orchestration and data governance solutions:

Tableau – Improved integration that provides seamless support and a real-time view of fresh data on InsightEdge at low latency, which is due to the platform’s data aggregation and filtering optimizations.
Jupyter – Python users can now incorporate the familiar Jupyter web notebook with InsightEdge, enjoying out-of-the-box connectivity and PySpark support.
AWS Marketplace – The InsightEdge Platform is now available as an AMI in the AWS Marketplace for one-click deployment, allowing AWS account users to purchase and launch an InsightEdge instance in the cloud.
Kubernetes Tiered Storage – MemoryXtend functionality in Kubernetes deployments is enhanced with persistent volume (SSD) support which leverages SSD and persistent memory technologies for optimized TCO.
RedHat OpenShift Operator Certification – Customers can develop, deploy and manage InsightEdge-based applications and services across on-premise, cloud and hybrid cloud environments via Red Hat’s certified and supported container operator ecosystem.
Informatica & InsightEdge integration – InsightEdge enhances Informatica’s integration hub with high performance, real-time analytics and machine learning capabilities resulting in a new Intelligent Digital Integration Hub for customers.

Release 14.5 also introduces the following enhancements for the GigaSpaces XAP data grid:

Support for Spring 5.0
Streamlined Maven installation
Blueprints for immediate deployment of basic data grid functionality
Interactive shell for the GigaSpaces CLI
New CSV reader for easy loading of data to the data grid

3rd Party Integrations with Popular BI and Developer Tools

Release 14.5 offers the following enhancements for third-party integrations.

Native Support for Tableau

InsightEdge now provides a custom connector to Tableau (version 2019.01 and later). After applying the InsightEdge connector, users can select InsightEdge as a data source from the Tableau Desktop.

Figure 2: New InsightEdge Connector for Tableau

Tableau is the leading analytics platform used to build customized BI visualizations on enterprise data. InsightEdge runs real-time analytics and machine learning on streaming, hot and historical data, in production and at scale. Enterprises can now more easily use Tableau over InsightEdge to visualize and understand their continuously updated operational data with low-latency interactive queries.

InsightEdge’s high-speed big data layer supports sharding, filtering and customized aggregation in a distributed manner for accelerated customized queries. The integration supports a high number of concurrent users, and handles peak events by utilizing a distributed, highly efficient shared-nothing architecture where there is no single point of contention between nodes.

Jupyter Integration for Python Users

GigaSpaces continues to add options to simplify and enhance the user experience. In addition to native support for Apache Zeppelin, which is used primarily by Java and Scala developers, InsightEdge now supports integration with the open-source Jupyter web notebook.

Programmers can perform data cleaning and transformation, numerical simulation, statistical modeling, data visualization, machine learning, and more on objects in the InsightEdge data grid using PySpark.

Cloud Deployment

In this release, we have continued to enrich our cloud deployment options with the following offerings.

InsightEdge in the AWS Marketplace

We are proud to announce that GigaSpaces’ InsightEdge Platform is now available as a paid AMI in the AWS Marketplace. Users with an AWS account can purchase and launch an InsightEdge instance in the cloud. AWS provides scalable computing capacity for developing and deploying applications without buying and maintaining hardware. You can launch virtual servers according to need, manage storage requirements, and configure security and networking.

See the GigaSpaces documentation website for details.

Tiered Storage Enhancement for Kubernetes Deployments

The GigaSpaces MemoryXtend functionality in Kubernetes has been expanded to include Persistent Volume support for InsightEdge deployments, which abstracts the details of the storage layer. You define which data is “hotter” based on business needs, and choose where to store it – Persistent Volume or RAM. MemoryXtend automatically queries the relevant tier to fetch the right data for you. The MemoryXtend module allows you to prioritize specific data in RAM to ensure millisecond performance close to the business logic, without transaction delays from physical I/O, database connection pool or network bandwidth issues.

Data Grid ConfiguredS with PersistenceVolumeClaim (PVC)

Figure 3: Data Grid ConfiguredS with PersistenceVolumeClaim (PVC)

Orchestration and ETL

InsightEdge seamlessly integrates with the latest cloud orchestration and enterprise cloud data management offerings, described below.

Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification

Customers can now download the InsightEdge Operator from the Red Hat Container Catalog and benefit from Red Hat OpenShift Operator. The InsightEdge Operator is ideal for developing and deploying time-sensitive applications that need performance and scale for transactional processing along with accelerated analytics and machine learning on streaming, hot and historical data. InsightEdge Operator can be easily deployed and managed across on-premise, cloud and hybrid cloud environments.

The InsightEdge Platform can be deployed using the Operator image already available in the Red Hat registry as part of the GigaSpaces repository. The InsightEdge Operator image is obtained from a Red Hat container registry using either the OpenShift Dashboard GUI interface or the Docker service command line.

Figure 4: InsightEdge Operator Image in Red Hat Container Catalog

Intelligent Digital Integration Hub

GigaSpaces has partnered with Informatica to deliver an Intelligent Digital Integration Hub across cloud, on-premise and hybrid environments. The solution unifies Informatica’s Hybrid Integration Platform, including its Integration Hub and Cloud iPaaS, with GigaSpaces’ InsightEdge in-memory, real-time analytics and machine learning platform within the Digital hub.

The solution also leverages Informatica’s Enterprise Data Catalog (EDC), powered by the Informatica CLAIRE™ engine, to provide machine-learning-based discovery to scan, catalog and detect data assets across the enterprise.

Joint Informatica-GigaSpaces Intelligent Digital Integration Hub

Figure 5: Joint Informatica-GigaSpaces Intelligent Digital Integration Hub

This provides the following benefits:

Single hub to unify multiple clouds, big data, streaming sources and any existing systems
Self-service to increase agility and put data in the hands of the business
Greater organization, visibility and control of data
Support for extreme performance and rich machine and deep learning capabilities

The joint Intelligent Digital Integration Hub solution was presented at Informatica World 2019, and won the top spot at the AI and Cloud Innovation Zone awards.
For more information on how to evaluate this solution, contact GigaSpaces support.

Summary

If you’re still using “rear-view mirror”analytics to drive business decisions, then you’re not getting the most out of your data. I recommend that we slightly modify W. Edwards Deming’s excellent quote from “In God we trust; all others bring data,” to “In God we trust; all others bring timely data,” This small change highlights the significance of data in motion and how the evolution from BI to AI is changing the way enterprises are doing business.
See how our GigaSpaces 14.5 release can help you on your digital-transformation journey to become insight driven.