illuminate Unveils Latest Version of Groundbreaking Correlation Database Technology That Automatically Designs and Builds Data Warehouses

iLuminate 4.0 offers world’s fastest performance, lowest cost of ownership from low deployment costs, and near-zero maintenance—as well as the Holy Grail in analytics: train-of-thought analysis™.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. and BARCELONA, SPAIN on 3 June 2009

illuminate Solutions (http://www.illuminateinc.com) today announced the release of its iLuminate correlation database technology. Testing indicates that it beats by an order of magnitude any data warehouse or data mart vendors’ benchmarks in the areas most important to customers: Time-to-analytics™, time-to-answer™, and total cost of ownership (TCO).

“For too long, customers have been told to measure a vendor’s performance by what the vendors themselves think is important—speeds and feeds,” said Kirsten Chapman, illuminate’s chief marketing and alliances officer. “Who cares about how fast data can be loaded into a database if it’s not usable? And although query performance is important, it’s only an interim step. What really matters is getting to the answer you need so you can make a decision. Query speed is only one aspect of that.“

Chapman encourages customers to start demanding benchmarks that reflect what’s important to them—usability, answers and cost—rather than what vendors say is important.

Why illuminate beats all vendors in customer-centric benchmarks

Fastest time-to-analytics—the time it takes to design, build, integrate, and deliver raw data in a usable form for analysis and exploration. Includes metric of load-speed. With iLuminate 4.0, customers can deploy a completely optimized, 100 percent flexible data warehouse or data mart of nearly any size in one-tenth the total time and cost—or less. There is no need for physical database design and programming or optimization techniques—the technology creates a data-generated data model on the fly while it’s loading data. When the load in complete, the data is ready for train-of-thought user analysis. iLuminate 4.0 load-speed is comparable to or faster than every other vendor’s when customer usability requirements are considered.

Fastest time-to-answer—the time it takes from the moment a user begins to analyze an issue to the time the user has the answer needed to make a decision. Includes metric of query speed. With iLuminate 4.0, users can do train-of-thought analysis from the moment they determine a need until they get the answer. All data is indexed for user access and gives them never-before-seen query types to explore data without hitting the limits of fixed data model structures that require IT intervention in order for the analysis to continue. iLuminate query performance is clocked at 20x or more faster than column databases such as Sybase IQ and Vertica and up to 60x faster than relational databases like Oracle, DB2, Teradata and Netezza.

Lowest TCO—the combination of hardware, software, and labor for implementation and ongoing maintenance of an analytics system. With iLuminate 4.0 requiring no physical design, programming or optimization, labor costs are a small fraction of any other vendors’ implementation costs. iLuminate also offers near-zero maintenance costs in two ways: 1) all data is indexed and available, so no IT projects are required to keep the system relevant, 2) new data sources are integrated and indexed on the fly during the load process, eliminating the need for re-architecting and optimizing the system.

“At first, we were skeptical that the software would do what illuminate said it would do,” said Bram Millenaar, Manager ICT at Neckermann.com, a large European online retailer. “To our great surprise, the POC proved it really works as advertised, so we bought it immediately. We’re extremely impressed with its fast deployment and the performance and flexibility of illuminate’s correlation database. There’s nothing else like it.”

New iLuminate 4.0 features

64-bit architecture allows for nearly unlimited scalability and faster query performance;

Enhanced multi-threading enables a larger number of users simultaneous database access;

Web services architecture allows for managed services and cloud deployments;

LDAP/Active Directory-based users and privileges management plugs into customers’ existing production environments; and Public APIs (Java, .Net, C++) enable easy development of custom analytic applications.

iLuminate 4.0 Query Performance Results

iLuminate 4.0 database technology uses groundbreaking value-based storage (VBS), which stores data values only once and uses a sophisticated indexing system to logically connect all data correlations and relationships. The database—actually the indexing system itself—is created on the fly during the load process and is inherently compact and ultra-fast since all data is accessed at index speed.

Testing Environment:

Hardware—cost $6,100 USD: one Dell 2900 Server, two dual core 2.66 Ghz processors, 10 Gbs RAM, six 300 Gbs 15,000 RPM disks in raid 5;

Database—sources: retail ERP (90% total source data), one Access database (<9% total source data), two Excel spreadsheets (<1% total source data); total records: approximately 1.3 billion; extracted data size: approximately 350 Gbs;

Data preparation before loading: None

Testing Results Query Types:

Scan-type query: <.01 seconds on entire database. Simulates a scan rate of more than 10 billlion records per second, compared to Netezza’s 650 million records per second on proprietary hardware.

Look-up-type query: .3 seconds on entire database shows speed of large response set size.

Multi-qualification query-type: .2 seconds on entire database shows speed of large intermediate results.

Product affinity-type query: 1.6 seconds on 772,836,787 record database. Comparable to Vertica’s 60-second mean result on a 100 Gb database tested on similar commodity hardware configuration.

“As close as I am to the technology, even I was surprised with the benchmarks,” said illuminate’s CTO Joe Foley. “But when you consider that everything is accessed at index speed, it really makes sense that we have a quantum leap in performance. Even with this record-breaking speed, what’s important to users is this time-to-answer metric.”

Foley emphasized that illuminate’s real value is its ability to give users train-of-thought analysis so they can keep working a problem until they’re satisfied that they have what they need to make a decision. It eliminates running into the walls inherent in fixed database models that require special IT projects to work around them.

illuminate’s sales process is focused on driving customers to do Proof-of-Concepts (POCs) in order to prove that its claims are true: automatic data warehouse design and build, as well as 100 percent query flexibility with world’s fastest performance.

illuminate Products, Pricing and Distribution

iLuminate 4.0—correlation database engine. Price based on number of records loaded. Starts at $41,900 for up to 35 million records. Concurrent connection fees apply and start at $2,750 for up to four connections;

iCorrelate—exploration and analysis tool. Price is $8,000 per seat; and

iLook&Load—quick data profiling and loading tool. Price is $10,000 per tool.

illuminate sells its products exclusively through an alliance network. Its partners are highly respected and experienced IT consulting firms that complete an illuminate-delivered intensive certification program and exam in order to be qualified to install and support its products. Presently, the company is building its partner network in Europe, Latin America and North America.