Platfora Brings Enhanced Visualization, Performance, And Collaboration To Big Data Analytics

Platfora announced Platfora 4.5, the latest version of the Platfora Big Data Discovery platform. Platfora is built on Apache Hadoop and Spark technologies and is designed to replace traditional ETL, Data Warehousing and BI tools. Platfora is aimed at users with non-technical backgrounds who wish to analyze data stored on Hadoop without requiring IT assistance or coding.

Platfora enables users to interactively explore large-scale datasets using an easy-to-use GUI. Data visualizations can be created and published using Platfora’s many collaborative features, including in-line comments and workflow integration.

Platfora has enhanced the data visualization capabilities of version 4.5 with the new Platfora Aurora Visualization Engine. Platfora stated that the Aurora Visualization Engine was created from scratch rather than using open-source technologies in order to achieve higher levels of performance. Platfora claimed that visualizations using the new engine are 10x faster than before, allowing users to interact with massive data sets on the fly.

Platfora has improved performance of the Platfora Lens technology. A lens is a user-generated on-demand data mart purpose built for a specific analytics task. Lenses can be of two different types: an aggregate lens contains aggregated measure data grouped by select dimensions useful for ad hoc analysis, while an event series lens is useful for time series analysis. Platfora claimed a 10x increase in lens performance through the use of a new framework for intra-node parallelism.

Platfora 4.5 features enhanced segmentation capabilities. Segmentation allows users to segregate customer populations based on an ad hoc choice of attributes and behaviors. An improved combined fields feature enables faster A/B comparison and segment comparisons. Overlap between different segments can be visualized using heatmaps and other visualization techniques.

Enhancements to security in Platfora 4.5 include a centralized management option to control who sees what data, and the new Platfora Namespace feature allows users to share the Platfora installation across an organization