IBM announced a new analytics appliance that allows organizations to analyze up to 10 petabytes of data in a matter of minutes. The technology is designed to help industries uncover patterns and trends from large data sets, while meeting compliance mandates.

One petabyte is 10 to the 15th power bytes.

The new IBM Netezza High Capacity Appliance addresses a growing challenge where organizations are amassing huge amounts of data. Banks, insurance companies, healthcare organizations, and communications services providers are required by industry regulators to retain massive amounts of data—in some cases up to a decade. As data retention laws continue to evolve, organizations are faced with a unique challenge to store and analyze ever-expanding “big data” sets that may not be directly related to daily operations, yet still hold potential business value.

Using the new appliance, businesses can now more easily sift through petabytes of data including banking and mobile phone transactions, insurance claims, electronic medical records, and sales information, IBM said. Companies can also analyze this information to reveal new trends on consumer sentiment, product safety, and sales and marketing effectiveness.

The new appliance can be up and running in 24 hours and analyze data at a much lower cost per terabyte, the company claimed. The appliance is the first to be delivered by IBM since it acquired Netezza in November 2010.

IBM said that nearly 500 clients around the world are using Netezza technology today. One of them, Kelley Blue Book, will be testing the new appliance to analyze click stream data created by users surfing its website. The company will be able to analyze this information to see what topics visitors cared most about, such as used and new vehicle prices, safety recall, and warranty data, and vehicle buyer reviews.

Another, Battelle’s Pacific Northwest Division is using Netezza as part of the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project. In the demonstration, 60,000 customers in 11 utilities, across five states, will share a unique digital signal for their smart meters that will allow them to make better decisions about their energy use.

The Netezza technology joins IBM’s Hadoop-based BigInsights software, as well as Streams software—both born in IBM Research. The software incorporates Watson-like technologies, including unstructured text analytics and indexing that allows users to analyze rapidly changing data formats and types on the fly, the company said.

http://thinking.netezza.com/press_release/new-ibm-analytics-technology-helps-clients-unlock-big-data