Jaspersoft, IBM Join Forces to Wrangle Big Data With Hadoop

Jaspersoft, maker of business intelligence software, announced that it is joining forces with IBM to help customers with Big Data analytics.

At IBM’s Information on Demand (IoD) 2011 conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 24, Jaspersoft said it will work with IBM to deliver a solution that combines IBM’s enterprise-class, Hadoop-based product, InfoSphere BigInsights, with Jaspersoft’s full BI suite to provide a complete reporting and management solution to meet customers’ significant-volume data needs.

With the increasing amount of data in companies today, there is an opportunity to extract high value from it inside and outside of the organization, Jaspersoft officials said. In fact, Forrester Research estimates that firms currently use less than five percent of their available data. That leaves a large pool of data untapped. While these data sets are characterized by their very large volume, velocity and variety of information; using the right tools, they can yield new insights for greater business value.

Through their new partnership around Big Data, Jaspersoft is integrating and licensing IBM InfoSphere BigInsights through an Application Specific Licensing Agreement. Jaspersoft for InfoSphere BigInsights combines the power of IBM’s analytics platform to manage, analyze and provide deep insight into Big Data with Jaspersoft’s capability to extract key information using flexible and easy-to-use reporting, dashboard and analytics views in one integrated solution, enabling competitive advantage, Jaspersoft officials said

“We’re pleased to be partnering with IBM to deliver an industry-leading solution that combines cost-effective and flexible business intelligence with Internet-scale data management capabilities,” said Karl Van den Bergh, vice president of product and alliances at Jaspersoft, in a statement. “Together, we can meet the Big Data Analytics needs of any size organization.”

Jaspersoft provides a native reporting solution that can connect directly to IBM InfoSphere BigInsights through HBase as well as Hive. This means that with Jaspersoft, businesses can perform interactive ad hoc reporting and analysis directly on data stored in Hadoop without having to load this data into another database as is the case with other BI vendors, company officials said. Fully integrated with IBM’s InfoSphere BigInsights platform, Jaspersoft’s BI suite provides BigInsights users with plug-and-play access to their organization’s data and the ability to combine this information with a wide range of other internal and external sources, including web and Software as a Service-based data sources.

“Jaspersoft provides a powerful and flexible reporting and analysis solution, and is a key part of our rich ecosystem in the Big Data space,” said Bruce Weed, program director for Big Data business development at IBM, in a statement. “In addition, Jaspersoft’s community of a quarter million members will help us further address and solve problems within the Big Data space.”

Key features of the solution include:

• The full Jaspersoft BI Suite including ETL, pixel-perfect and ad hoc reporting, dashboards, and analysis with native connectors to IBM InfoSphere BigInsights through HBase and Hive
• Job and workflow management, provisioning and advanced security, large-scale indexing and text analysis through IBM InfoSphere BigInsights
• Available as a free/community version and a commercial version with more advanced features