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    Alteryx Navigates Big Data as Both Science and Art

    A lot has been made over the need for more data scientists in the age of Big Data. But the truth of the matter is that analytics is as much an art as it is science.

    In pursuit of that, Alteryx today released an upgrade to its analytics application that sports a new user interface aimed to serve the needs of what the company calls “data artisans.”

    Gathering data may be a science, but sifting through it all to find relevant information is an art. To help make the gathering of data easier, Alteryx Strategic Analytics 8.5 also adds the ability to inject social media data into any analytic app. New preview capabilities for Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare can be simply added into any analytic workflow. Additionally, Alteryx is announcing a new partnership with Gnip, a provider of social media data, to enable the integration of the Gnip enterprise social media streams into Alteryx analytic applications.

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    With this release, Alteryx is also adding support for the Tableau Data Extract files as a native output that can be accessed via a new Tableau Data Extract API that Tableau Software is making available as part of a forthcoming Tableau 8.0 release.

    Finally, Alteryx is extending an existing partnership with Teradata with support for the analytics capabilities inside the Teradata Aster massively parallel database and a new connector to the Teradata data warehouse that provides high-speed read/write capabilities. Alteryx is also now providing a new Oracle database bulk loader, enabling Oracle customers to benefit from large-scale data blending.

    According to Rick Schultz, Alteryx senior vice president of marketing, the end goal is to simplify accessing multiple sources of Big Data in ways that allow analysts to then easily manipulate that data – for example, to include location.

    For all the talk about Big Data these days, all that data is still a means to an end. The next big challenge is finding the analytics applications that turn all that data into intelligence the business would actually consider actionable.

    Mike Vizard
    Mike Vizard
    Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.

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