London -- Oninit Consulting, the Informix services company, and Traak Systems, which provides predictive analytics solutions, have announced a partnership which will see them jointly develop solutions for the energy, renewable energy and utilities marketplace. Together they will work to combine the power of the Traak complex event-processing (CEP) engine with that of Informix, one of the fastest and most powerful databases in the world. The solutions will leverage the native time-series data-handling capabilities of Informix and the analytical, real-time, next-event predictive capabilities of the CEP engine. "Companies will, for the first time, be able to receive, interpret, and understand vast quantities of real-time information and transform this for immediate action in dynamic business situations." Traak and Oninit will focus initially on the energy and utilities markets and broaden the focus to other sectors including transportation, retail, and manufacturing over time.
Informix and the Traak CEP engine have an extremely complementary technical fit. The Traak engine deals with monumental torrents of real-time information. To analyze it effectively within a historical context, the persistence layer (the database) must be able to accept and process the data in real-time without demanding disproportionately expensive server resources. "The Informix efficiency with this type of data is up to 60 times better than a commodity relational database and gives the Traak engine the highest possible levels of performance at an extremely competitive price point." The Traak CEP engine is deployed as an appliance with a management dashboard customized to each industry sector or individual customer need. It can accept inputs from a vast array of sources, including smart meters, sensor networks, RFID, Wi-Fi, and other live data inputs.
Colin Balfour, Managing Director at Traak Systems says: "We needed a database which would enable data to load extremely fast, be processed quickly and be efficient to query. Informix has the capability, speed, and efficiency required. We are confident it's a great fit, not only because of its technical capabilities but also because it comes from IBM, which is fully engaged in developing the smarter solutions which our increasingly smart planet will need."
The partnership blends the skills of each firm. Oninit brings a deep understanding of Informix application development, practical implementation, and support to complement Traak's experience in solutions for advanced data management in numerous industries, including the energy and renewables sector.
John Baker, Managing director of Oninit Consulting says: "We are delighted to be working closely with Traak and excited by the potential to develop joint solutions to real-world challenges. Oninit strongly believes in the partnership principle; we already work with many companies which bring deep knowledge of different technologies, which complement our own rich experience in the Informix environment, and Traak is an excellent example of that."
Smart technologies are delivering ever-higher quantities of information, in the form of faster and more constant streams of data, for processing by enterprise systems. The potential of such information is enormous if it can be appropriately analyzed and acted upon. However most databases struggle to cope with time-series data that arrives at regular intervals from multiple sources, being unable to load the information fast enough or store it effectively. Informix handles time-series data as a native feature and also features a real-time loader, designed specifically for smart meter data. "Together these enable it to receive, process, validate, and manage real-time data streams much faster and more accurately than other databases."
The potential for smart data management systems is enormous. Systems in every industry are getting smarter, meaning that the data management challenge is growing across the board.
- In the energy and utilities market, smart meters and smart sensors can potentially generate millions of bits of data on a constant basis at high speed from sources such as domestic meters, or out in the field from wind and wave speed sensors.
- In the transportation industry, smart devices and systems such as roadside sensors promise better urban traffic management and transport security.
- In environmental management, minute changes in air quality are being recorded across wide metropolitan or national areas.
- Weather information, RFID, and automatic inventory control systems are already being used for retail planning.
The potential to combine different sources of real-time information is vast. However, data only becomes truly meaningful when you are able to analyze and reveal patterns in real time, and even more powerful when you are able to use that real-time information to generate predictive intelligence. The Oninit and Traak Systems partnership will be at the forefront of this burgeoning market.
About Oninit
Oninit Consulting was founded in 1999 as a specialist Informix developer and consulting team, and since that time, it has grown into a leading Informix services company, providing a range of Informix database and application development, support, and training services to companies in the UK and across EMEA from its base in Cirencester, UK.
Informix is deeply embedded in the enterprise IT systems of many thousands of companies worldwide. Oninit provides the vital Informix technical support and development services that are required by these complex systems.
Oninit helps companies to develop new Informix applications, as well as support, enhance, integrate, and modernize applications running on older installations. It works with customers to upgrade and modernize these to take maximum advantage of the latest Informix technical enhancements and additions, ensuring a roadmap for their future IT or establishing an evolutionary path to more modern open or virtualized architectures.
About Traak Systems
Traak Systems provides real-time predictive analytics, based on its award-winning technology, that blends disparate live data streams from many sources, including sensor networks and RFID into meaningful and actionable business information and dashboards in real time.
Traak's solutions enable a wide variety of applications where there is an urgent need to sense and respond in real time to critical and dynamic situations and environments. It provides situation awareness and continuous intelligence to enable smart infrastructures in markets as diverse as energy and utilities, including renewables, transportation and logistics, retail, healthcare, and manufacturing. Traak is a private equity backed organization, based in Edinburgh.