Clouds, clouds, everywhere there are clouds. Here’s one more to file in your cloud list from Infochimps that’s all about big data.
Infochimps Enterprise Cloud is the kind of service you won’t see any time soon from an enterprise behemoth like Oracle or most of the enterprise big boys. Why? Because it’s self service. You don’t need three weeks of training and a background in programming, analytics, and computer science to use the service.
Infochimps data scientists and engineers developed the platform so they could collect lots of data and perform complex analytics along the way. A customer can pull in data from CRM systems and any of the other app silos where data pools then combine it with the data from Facebook, Twitter, and other services. The data flows into Infochimps’ data-delivery service and is cleaned up along the way. Data gets enriched, as needed, with other pieces of information such as demographic data.
The service works with any kind of database. Infochimps can implement any combination, including relational for SQL-like queries, and NoSQL for Hadoop jobs and big data storage. Analysis tools on the back-end provide the capability to create visuals and reports.
Infochimps is one of a growing ecosystem of companies that are programming the knowledge of data scientists, statisticians and programmers into applications that businesspeople can use.
The new enterprise cloud from Infochimps reminds me of Prior Knowledge, a company that debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt, and was recently acquired by Salesforce.com. The Prior Knowledge team had spent years learning the art of statistics. They built that knowledge into the software so companies can actually use the data that they have.
It’s crazy expensive to hire teams of data scientists and big data teams. Infochimps and a host of other companies are showing that you really don’t need to do that to get the analysis you need.