The FAQs
Most of our clients know exactly what they need – and some of them don’t even know they actually have a need. This page is for the latter. We can be a big help for your business: our solutions save time and money. So attention all small businesses without an IT-manager!
Every business has databases and data – many systems lock the information in and reporting between different systems doesn’t work. We use technologies that support different platforms comprehensively and your data can be collected to one place and analyzed extensively.
Big data: what and why?
Big data? Yes, and important data. Big data is not just for big companies as utilizing it can help small businesses in the competition. Practically: big data means all that information your company has. And by analyzing it correctly, the profit and competitiveness can be improved. With the help of big data we can make your business run smoothly – your employee’s work becomes easier and your customer’s experience gets better.
Big data helps your business wheels roll better in many ways – and Hi-IS does everything for you.
But data is just numbers?
Yes. And because the whole world is mathematics, those data numbers tell exactly how to make inner reporting more efficient, how to keep your clients coming back, or where are the risks and the true potential of your business. Just to name a few examples.
What does it cost?
When managing data warehouses, the cheapest choice isn’t usually the best. But the best isn’t necessarily the most expensive. We have chosen to partner with the best international businesses and their advanced products. Ask yourself the most important question: “What am I actually paying for and what are the costs of wasted hours?”
What’s Hadoop?
And what does “Hadoop distribution” mean? In Finland for example tele- and game industries use Hadoop. In the near future more and more Hadoop users will be found also in marketing, media, manufacturing and service industries. Our partner Cloudera, founded in 2008, was the first Hadoop company. Hadoop distribution is an ecosystem, which has all the tools for data saving, integration and analyzing. XDFS (e.g. HDFS, GDFS, etc.) is a file system used for saving information. Flume and Spark Streaming are components used for transferring information. Kafka is a message queue (in Cloudera’s distribution) and Spark, MapReduce, Cloudera Impala, Apache Hive and Apache Phoenix are components used for analyzing. Answering “What you can do with Hadoop distribution?” can be easy or hard – what would you like to do, when nearly everything is possible?
What does DW mean?
DW = data warehouse. We’ll renew your old data warehouse to be more flexible and real time. Also new systems can be taken to the analytics, and we can explore how to benefit from machine learning in reporting. Big data, DW, DQ (data quality) and MDM (master data management) are so closely connected to each other, that you can’t really talk about them separately.
Because the transaction requirements have increased and technologies developed, DW evolved into DW 2.0 – which basically is a combination of everything data warehouses previously needed to function. The backbone of DW 2.0 architecture is metadata – and controlling metadata is the key to everything. One of DW 2.0’s priorities is receiving information fast and that is possible with new, efficient technologies. One of the most important changes is data lifecycle, which has commonly been linked to MDM. The old information won’t disappear: it’s archived and can be analyzed whenever necessary. So DW 2.0 means bigger amounts of data, but at the same time, due to data compartmentalization, the user actually faces less of it. But what about DW 3.0? Will it come – or when will it come?
What is information model and performance optimization?
When we monitor databases, we receive information about how they are used. At the same time we can see the causes of performance problems. In optimization the settings of the operating system are adjusted so that the databases work – and the database settings so that the performance gets better.
Should my database be optimized?
For big companies, there might be several terabytes of data piling up during the day. By all means the number is smaller for smaller companies – but all that data is still important for business, future and clients. For example, a small family business, aiming for the international markets, could benefit from data by screening the most valuable ones among millions of potential customers. Ask yourself at least these questions:
“Do I have more data than the possibility to store it? Do I spend a lot of money storing it? Could I serve my customers better or sell more if my information systems wouldn’t be so loaded – or at least communicated with each other?”
And in the future?
In addition to all the information already existing, there is more and more of it produced constantly. And for example the Internet of Things (IoT) and social media channels keep on growing.
The amount of data increases every second, and you could already be utilizing it.
Proof of Concept test environments (POC)
When needed, we’ll build a test environment – you can try the functionality of the system and the applications, drive inquiries to the system and see, how all the areas work together. Simply put: see, how your big data integrates into the operative applications and flows into reports.
Do you also do … ?
A universal answer: most likely yes. Tell us about your systems and we tell you, how we can help. See Consultation.