RedPoint
Sailing Through the Big Data Frontier

Big Data is the “next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity.”Turning this ‘frontier’ into meaningful business results is the specialty of RedPoint Global Inc.—a Boston, MA, developer of software applications that help companies cost-effectively manage all their data, derive actionable insights from it, and take the most appropriate actions to monetize it.

RedPoint offers world-class ETL, data quality and data integration applications that operate across traditional and Hadoop 2.0/YARN environments. The company also offers data-driven, customer engagement solutions that help companies derive insights from customer behaviors and create consistent and precise messaging across channels. RedPoint’s applications utilize a visual user interface that eliminates the need for programming skills, allowing enterprises to easily utilize data to achieve strategic business goals.

Simplifying complexity to help companies achieve greater strategic benefit is a consistent RedPoint theme. Founded by individuals who defined the Customer Relationship Management industry in the ‘90s and went on to build leading-edge analytics/customer intelligence companies, RedPoint unified this CRM and data expertise to create the first marketing platform with a data management foundation.

One of the biggest challenges that organizations face is finding the resources and tools to help them become data-driven organizations. As more companies see the benefits of a data-driven approach, they will begin competing for fewer and more expensive skilled resources

RedPoint’s achievement was recognized by Gartner which named them a “Cool Vendor” in CRM in 2013. The company’s Data Management suite is ranked #1 in customer data processing, speed, match quality, and ease of use.

“Our interest in Big Data was the result of working closely with clients – marketers, data analysts, DBAs – who deal with customer data across multiple channels and who need a way to capture and analyze structured and unstructured data – like social media,” explained Dale Renner, RedPoint’s CEO and Founder.

Renner says that despite Big Data’s popularity, there are challenges:

• Skills Gap: Hadoop 1.0, a popular framework for Big Data, offers scalability and flexibility but requires knowledge of MapReduce, a complex coding language. One of the biggest challenges to utilizing Big Data in Hadoop is the lack of skilled programmers; a by product is underutilization of existing staff and an inability to leverage data management skills across the enterprise.

• Maturity and Governance: Recently introduced, Hadoop 2.0/YARN allows users to bypass MapReduce to operate in HDFS, but it lacks a mature ecosystem. Since Hadoop is used to capture data originating outside the enterprise, organizations have to be careful about data hygiene. Few applications offer a full feature set for addressing data quality issues inside Hadoop. YARN-certified RedPoint’s Data Management for Hadoop™ does.

• Data into Information: Turning Big Data in Hadoop into useful information requires manipulation. Analysts must structure the data based on its intended use. Merging data from different sources, transforming it, loading it– these are data quality issues. Products like RedPoint’s simplify these tasks across both Hadoop and traditional data environments.

RedPoint’s visual programming interface lowers the threshold for taking advantage of Hadoop for Big Data processing. It combines the capability and robustness of a mature technology with ease of use, offering more consistent and speedier results than tools that require knowing MapReduce code.

“One of the biggest challenges organizations face is finding the resources and tools to help them become data-driven. As more companies see the benefits in Big Data, they will begin competing for fewer, more expensive skilled resources. This is true for both our Hadoop and marketing clients. RedPoint provides easy-to-use, full-featured applications that help each succeed,” Renner adds.