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Welcome to the latest BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Edition, Vol. 35, a periodic discussion and dissection of software, services, SOA and compute cloud-related news and events with a panel of IT analysts. In this episode, our guests make their top five predictions for IT in 2009. We’re going to look at what trends may have changed in 2008, but with an emphasis on the impacts for IT users, and buyers and sellers in the coming year.

Originally posted here:
7 Experts Paint Enterprise IT Landscape for 2009

Internet-scale data sets and Web-scale analytics have placed a different set of requirements on software infrastructure and data processing techniques. More types of companies and organizations are seeking new inferences and insights across a variety of massive data sets — some into the petabyte scale. How can all this data be shifted and analyzed quickly, and how can we deliver the results to an inclusive class of business-focused users?

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BI Boost: Conquering Massive Data Sets With MapReduce

Microsoft gave audience attendees at the 2nd annual Microsoft Business Intelligence conference a sneak preview of its forthcoming SQL Server this week, code named “Kilimanjaro.” It was an appropriate venue for its debut, given its increased emphasis on BI. New functional areas of emphasis in the server match Microsoft’s vision for BI, which is to make it pervasive throughout the enterprise, Fausto Ibarra, director of product management for SQL Server, told CRM Buyer.

Continued here:
Microsoft Aims to Spread BI Throughout the Enterprise

All companies have similar problems, with one of the biggest being the ongoing challenge of growing their revenues. In today’s declining economy, companies are seeking new ideas, new solutions, and proven advice to fight off competition and stay above water. The most successful organizations are not focused solely on increasing product sales, but also on improving service revenues to stay ahead of the competition. In fact, according to a recent study by the Aberdeen Group, reduced product margins in today’s slowing economy are placing added pressure on companies to sell more services.

Excerpted from:
How to Know Customers’ Needs Before They Do

In what could best be termed a photo finish, Greenplum and Aster Data Systems have both announced that they have integrated MapReduce into their massively parallel processing database engines. MapReduce, pioneered by Google for analyzing the Web, now becomes available to enterprises and service providers, giving them more access and visibility into more data from more origins. Originally created to analyze massive amounts of unstructured data, the approach has been updated to analyze structured data as well.

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MapReduce and the Database: Analytics in Hyperdrive