Blazent, a leader in IT data intelligence, today launched the first big data platform targeted specifically at the problem of inaccurate and incomplete data within IT. The Blazent Data Intelligence Platform can transform enterprise data from hundreds of disparate IT datastores into a single foundation of quality data that IT leaders can count on to optimize the operational and financial performance of IT, and manage risk within their environments.
In an era of increasing complexity and data volume, a typical IT environment is comprised of massive amounts of siloed, incomplete and inaccurate data, resulting in upwards of 40 percent poor data quality and little to no context or visibility for confident decision-making. This data accuracy problem leaves organizations more vulnerable to operational risks that lead to more service outages and increased time to resolution, and data governance challenges that lead to audit pressure and inefficient IT spending. The Blazent Data Intelligence Platform solves these problems by leveraging a new big data engine and a 5-step data evolution process to ensure that, for the first time, IT organizations and service providers have the needed “master source of truth” to fuel IT agility.
“Data quality is a fundamental issue plaguing today’s increasingly heterogeneous and disjointed IT environments,” said Gary Oliver, Chief Executive Officer of Blazent. “Poor IT data quality is the reason that 40 percent of all IT projects fail to achieve targeted benefits, and 30 percent of servers are underutilized, and in many cases, not backed up or secure – leaving organizations challenged in managing risk, providing effective operations and controlling costs. These are the types of business-critical issues that guided us in creating the Data Intelligence Platform, encapsulating 13 years of experience in Master Data Management, Data Governance and Service Management.”
Data Evolution Process and Big Data Engine
Blazent’s 5-step data evolution process begins with data atomization, which breaks down IT data, regardless of its source, to its most granular level. It then enriches the data with identity management, relationship analysis, purification, and historicity. To create the master source of truth, Blazent integrates with more than 230 discrete data sources, from ITSM systems like ServiceNow to procurement, billing, operational tool stacks, or even shadow IT sources like spreadsheets. Powered by high-performance technologies including Active MQ, Cassandra, Hadoop and Spark, Blazent’s big data engine is optimized for scalability and near real-time data processing.
A Gartner report, Answering Big Data’s 10 Biggest Vision and Strategy Questions, published August 2014, validates the problem. “Information (even big data) without insight is an unrealized resource. Conversely, analytics without a solid information foundation is likely to lead to poor decisions. Big data analytics, therefore, is the application of analytic capabilities (descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive) on enormous, varied or rapidly changing datasets.”
Data Processing and Purification Maximizes CMDB Initiatives
Effective big data analytics extends the value of Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) and enables enterprises to maximize their IT and business initiatives. Rather than simply integrating raw data across different data sources, the Blazent Data Intelligence Platform purifies service data with associated people and processes to provide greater context and accuracy as changes are made across disparate systems. This enables enterprises and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to accelerate time to resolution, and reliably make highly precise business decisions anytime, anywhere.
The Business Value of Big Data: Analyzing and Gaining Insight
In addition to a newly architected big data engine, Blazent is introducing two new modules: Data Explorer for reporting and GLOVE (Governance, Lifecycle Operational Validation, Expenditure) for IT service governance and auditing. Data Explorer and GLOVE complement Blazent’s current suite of modules, which are designed to solve specific business challenges, including Data Quality Management, Operational Service Validations and Software Inventory Analysis. The introduction of Data Explorer and GLOVE provide the following benefits:
- Data Explorer: Provides custom dashboards and reporting based on aggregated data across 230+ data sources, including network monitoring tools, security products and service management offerings such as ServiceNow. Data Explorer provides an intuitive interface, simple configuration and one-click drill down capabilities, allowing users to make fast, data-driven decisions for any related business objective – such as billing, security, or operations.
- GLOVE (Governance, Lifecycle Operational Validation, Expenditure): Critical to proper IT governance, GLOVE offers refined analytics which are particularly useful for Managed Service Providers responsible for managing vast IT services and solutions portfolios. GLOVE enables users to visualize the true lifecycle status of billed or allocated entities, and is granular enough to obtain the insights required to effectively govern key auditable areas, such as correct lifecycle status or account expenditures. Users can also run continuous end-to-end IT audits that establish trusted baselines, or identify rouge assets to diagnose over/under-billed services and analyze historical data trends.
“Blazent has diligently remained at the forefront of the world’s largest data-intensive environments, and this release marks the evolution of our technology with our formal entry into big data analytics,” said Michael Ludwig, Chief Product Architect at Blazent. “The Blazent Data Intelligence Platform builds upon our customer-proven solutions with a powerful, new big data engine and data process guaranteed to transform data intelligence into business results.”
SUPPORTING QUOTES
“Blazent’s technology, and its new GLOVE module, gives ISG the analytics, trending data and end-to-end insights we need to support our governance services and increase the value we deliver to our clients,” said Tina Roy, Partner with Information Services Group’s Managed Services Business. “With more clients operating in multi-sourced environments, moving to Global Shared Services models and transitioning work to the cloud, our partnership with Blazent has never been more important or more valuable.”
“When I started working with the Blazent technology years ago, big data wasn’t a buzzword. However, the problem was very real and their solution was then, and still is, like nothing else on the market,” said Colin Bottomley, Global Account General Manager at CSC. “Blazent’s comprehensive view across our entire IT environment enabled us to eliminate the limitations of existing IT service management tools as well as maximize our revenue stream and minimize security exposure for our client. It remains a trusted source of IT data, and the ultimate source of truth for our organization and customers.”
About Blazent
Blazent is the leader in IT data intelligence. The Blazent Data Intelligence Platform is powered by the company’s big data engine and patent-pending 5-step Data Evolution Process. The platform transforms and validates all IT data, enabling enterprises and Managed Service Providers to make business decisions based upon complete and accurate data. Blazent is headquartered in Silicon Valley. For more information, visit www.Blazent.com