FICO Predictive Suite Updated, Real-Time Rises: Big Data Roundup

Agile Analytics: 11 Ways To Get There

A couple of open source big data projects took the spotlight this week. Samsung told developers about its IoT innovations. The ODPi organization promoting an open big data framework announced a few new members. FICO announced its Decision Management Suite 2.0. Plus, we've got details about a new crowd-sourced Chronos contest to solve a geospacial challenge.

Let's start with the FICO news. The predictive analytics and data science specialist this week unveiled version 2.0 of its Decision Management Suite -- in an announcement that was the centerpiece of the company's FICO World 2016 conference in Washington.

The expanded, cloud-based suite of analytics tools and applications offers a unified and more intuitive user interface that includes the recent DMN standard, as well as support for Apache Spark. The company said that subject matter experts can model a decision using the FICO DMN Modeler and put it into production with the Decision Management Platform without involving IT, the company said in a statement announcing the news.

[No security is perfect. Find out how identity management security in particular is vulnerable when it comes to the cloud. Read Identity Management: Where Cloud Security Falls Short.]

The new FICO Strategy Director is a tool that lets users structure the decision flow. The addition of FICO Decision Management Platform Streaming lets businesses filter and aggregate batch and streaming data from sources on the fly. FICO Decision Central provides infrastructure to manage, audit, report, and update decision logic, along with predictive models.

FICO Decision Management Suite 2.0 also includes new Security Information and Event Management (SEIM) services that capture and analyze machine data and system log files. The suite offers a text and unstructured analytics capability, too.

Version 2.0 of the suite is available via FICO Analytic Cloud, Amazon Web Services, or as a private cloud or on-premises deployment.

ODPi Welcomes New Members

ODPi, the nonprofit Open Data Platform for Hadoop organization supported by Hadoop distribution companies Hortonworks and IBM, has announced three more companies as members of the group -- and they aren't Cloudera or MapR. Instead, these new members are providers that expand the geographic reach of the organization with presences in Asia and Russia. 4CDecision is a full-stack data, analytics, and technology service provider that helps companies establish best practices to store, manage, and analyze their data. ArenaData offers an open analytical platform leveraging what the company said are 100% open components to replace legacy platforms or SNMP databases. AsiaInfo is a provider of Internet-based systems and software for the telecom industry.

Samsung, the ARTIK Cloud, and IoT

This week also featured the Samsung Developers Conference in San Francisco, where much of the talk focused not just on mobile, but also on the Internet of Things. Samsung views cloud as the heart of its IoT business, and announced the launch of ARTIK Cloud during the event this week. The company also focused on a number of innovations for the IoT business, including devices to help enhance virtual reality recordings, a new wearable life-logging camera, a Samsung virtual assistant called Otto that is akin to Amazon Echo, and more.

Apache Apex and Apache Kafka

Real-time big data technology also took center stage this week as Apache Apex won promotion to a Top-Level Project at the Apache Software Foundation, and the developers behind Apache Kafka held their first Summit around the technology, also in San Francisco. Real-time streaming data is changing what big data can do, Gartner analyst Merv Adrian told InformationWeek, and the disruptions to industry will continue in the months and years ahead.

Cracking the Code in Satellite Data

Finally this week, we have a cool challenge for you. Engineering firm Draper is sponsoring a contest to help it analyze satellite imagery from new satellite data.

"New constellations of small satellites will launch in the near future, generating a deluge of imagery for analysts to sift through to find patterns and answers to perplexing issues," the company wrote in its statement announcing the contest. "To help prepare for the onslaught, Draper is sponsoring a contest for bright/creative/audacious contestants to demonstrate the skills of intelligence analysts or crime scene investigators as they develop online tools to analyze satellite imagery and solve this vexing dilemma."

The contest will include prize money for those who come in first ($40,000), second ($25,000), or third ($10,000), for developing new tools to solve a puzzle using these daily aerial pictures of California.

"This work will ultimately help analysts uncover trends related to climate change, natural disasters, and public health crises," said Kim Slater, who leads Draper's small satellite initiative. "Combining more frequent imagery with big data analytics will yield more actionable intelligence that enables better decision-making."