Datameer’s Tool Seeks to Boost Data Lake Adoption

As big data set keeps getting bigger, vendors are pitching different approaches for exploring it faster and at scale with the goal of delivering real-time analytics.

Among the frameworks being unveiled at this week’s Strata conference in New York City is an “interactive visual exploration” tool from analytics software vendor Datameer. The company, which downplays the need for hiring big data science teams, claims its platform can help unify data ingestion and preparation by adding visual exploration of data lakes while leveraging Hadoop.

San Francisco-based Datameer said Tuesday (Sept. 26) its visualization tool based on its proprietary dynamic indexing technology extends its Visual Explorer platform beyond integration and data preparation to include what it claims in “unrestrained interactive visual exploration of extremely large data sets.”

Datameer CEO Christian Rodatus said the company’s approach extends beyond earlier attempts to remake the enterprise data warehouse stack via SQL or online analytical processing. Those approaches “required many hops between different tools, duplicating data and creating latency, which limited data exploration,” Rodatus argued.

Datameer’s interactive visual approach addresses a “common pain point,” he added: the current need to switch between tools used to prepare and curate data. The lack of an interactive exploration tool has created a gap between business analysts and data lakes. The addition of its Hadoop-native visual application is designed to eliminate duplication and other processing steps to accelerate the process of generating data sets that are ready to analyze, the company argues.

Stefan Groschupf, Datameer’s founder, has also argued that the rush to hire data scientist teams is often unnecessary. “More and more companies are understanding that there are very specific use case where data science teams are incredibly valuable, but not everything needs a data scientist,” he told Datanami in July.

Hence, the company said its new tool is designed to bridge the “last mile” functionality gap between data preparation and analysis.

In addition, the company said data engineers and business analysts could use a familiar spread sheet-like interface to analyze data, generating charts and graphs that visualize an entire data set. Those features, the company asserts, provide an “ad-hoc” analytics capability that would “ultimately foster greater adoption of the data lake.”

Emphasizing speed, the Datameer framework is fundamentally designed to overcome the inherent latency associated with the availability of raw data and its preparation for analysis. While data engineers focus on ingestion and preparation, analysts can beef up the resulting data pipelines, the company claims. The platform is designed to then convert data analysis into “reusable” data pipelines.

Datameer said its Visual Explorer is available now in a private beta version for select customers. The company will provide live demonstrations during the Strata Data Conference.

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