Alteryx: Big Data Analysis Not Just For Scientists, Statisticians

Alteryx Strategic Analytics 8.5, unveiled this week at the company's Inspire 2013 conference in Phoenix, is scheduled for general availability in April.

Many big data analysis tools are designed for "data scientists" and statisticians. With the 8.5 release Alteryx is trying to make its advanced analytical capabilities accessible to a wider audience, such as marketing, sales and operational decision-makers.

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"We think the time-to-value for more people within the organization will be accelerated," said Paul Ross, Alteryx product and industry marketing vice president, in an interview. "We're humanizing big data."

Alteryx 8.5 offers new tools for feeding data from Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare into analytic workflows. The company also revealed a partnership with GNIP, whose software and services are used by businesses to collect social data, under which the companies have developed a tool to integrate GNIP social data streams into Alteryx analytical applications.

The new Alteryx edition also incorporates the Tableau Data Extract file format as a native output option for delivering analytical workflow results. Ross said Alteryx sees Tableau becoming a de facto industry-standard file format for business analytics output.

Altyrex 8.5 also has a connector to Teradata's Unified Data Architecture, allowing Alteryx users to tap into Teradata systems for data analysis, and a bulk loader connector for Oracle data warehouse systems. The software also has a new user interface with interactive mapping capabilities and new predictive tools such as market basket analysis.

PUBLISHED MARCH 8, 2013