Fast Search & Transfer offers search alternative to data warehouses

IDG News Service - Fast Search & Transfer ASA has developed an enterprise search system that it says improves on the benefits of traditional data warehouses while cutting down on implementation time, cost and complexity.

Called the Adaptive Information Warehouse (AIW), the system includes a tool to "clean" data to put it into a uniform format and a tool to analyze the data and generate reports.

The Data Cleansing Solution tool allows customers to create a single master index of corporate data, regardless of where it is located: databases, business applications, content management systems, CRM software, intranets and the like.

Meanwhile, another AIW component called Radar is a relational online analytical processing tool that analyzes data, generates reports and creates dashboards. Radar can work with other tools, including data mining software.

AIW is suitable for companies that don't already have enterprise search products, because it brings everything needed to index their data, said Davor Sutija, vice president of Fast's strategic market development. Companies that already have a Fast Search platform can simply add on the new tools in AIW, such as the data cleansing and analysis tools, he said.

The full AIW package, including the search platform, Radar and Data Cleansing Solution, starts at $300,000 and up, depending on the size of the implementation.

Setting up an AIW system will take significantly less time than building a data warehouse, cost less and provide more agile access to corporate data, Sutija said. An AIW system can be set up in eight to 10 weeks, while a data warehouse can take 18 months or longer, he said. Meanwhile, AIW indexes data that is much more granular than is usually available in a data warehouse, where data is usually consolidated into weekly or monthly results, he added.

Fast's search-focused approach to business intelligence is clever, but the concept will probably be a tough sell for companies that have already invested millions of dollars and devoted years of effort to building and maintaining a data warehouse, said Guy Creese, a Burton Group analyst. Over the past decade, most large companies have built data warehouses and bought and learned the analysis tools needed to mine the data, he said.

If Fast manages to convince large companies to complement their data warehouses with the AIW, these customers are bound to see the benefits of the search-based approach, Creese added. Advantages include more flexibility in crafting ad hoc queries and wider use in the organization, beyond the 10% to 20% of employees whose jobs require them to generate reports regularly, Creesesaid. The search interface is simpler to use than a traditional data analysis application and will seem friendlier to occasional users, he said.

Fast may have an easier time convincing fast-growing, medium-size companies that haven't yet invested in data warehouses, Creese added, because the cost and complexity of building a data warehouse are well known.