Aster Data Reveals Findings From Big Data Summit Conferences on How Companies Want to Harness Big Data

SAN CARLOS, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/08/10 -- Aster Data, a market leader in big data management and advanced analytics, today disclosed the results of research conducted among attendees at the Company's Big Data Summit conferences. The Summits have drawn over 800 attendees and were held in major US cities including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, and Washington, DC over the past year. The Company will be hosting the next event -- rebranded as the "Data Analytics Summit" to reflect the increased focus on both advanced analytics as well as big data management -- in New York City on November 18. The opportunity that harnessing big data presents, the data challenges facing companies, and the advanced analytical techniques brought by Aster Data's solution were outlined by Summit participants and attendees including industry leaders, partners, and analysts from the data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytics markets.

Attendees surveyed during the Summits pointed to several important business opportunities resulting from big data analytics:

• Discover New Market Opportunities: Nearly 30% of respondents thought that exploratory analysis of big data to find "the next big business insight" was a huge business opportunity. This supports the notion that massive data exploration, and the role of data scientists is key for today's data-driven organizations.
• Behavioral Targeting/Advertising: 16% surveyed called out the importance of establishing links between purchasing behavior and areas like advertising spend to better tailor budgets and tailor promotional campaigns.
• Social Network Analysis (SNA): 15% of those surveyed responded that using social network analysis techniques, including graph-based analytics, to build a more complete profile of their customer base and identifying patterns in the customer base is a key business opportunity. SNA has become critical to identifying user behavior, key influencers and behavioral differences between micro-segments, opening up opportunities for better customer marketing and targeting.
• Monetizing Data: 15% of respondents say monetizing data is a key issue for organizations seeking to unlock the hidden value within previously untapped assets, such as improved ad optimization and improving "purchase to abandonment" ratios
• Fraud Reduction and Risk Profiling: Distinguishing good customers from higher risk customers, for fraud reduction (10%) and risk profiling (10%), was identified as critical for financial services institutions.

While the opportunities big data management and advanced analytics present are promising, the attendees also noted challenges they face using traditional, legacy SQL-only DBMSs and data warehousing:

• 20% identified the slow speed of complex query processing as a big obstacle.
• Over 30% identified scalability of systems as the second highest barrier to success with cost to scale traditional systems being the key issue.

Sharmila Mulligan, executive vice president of worldwide marketing for Aster Data, said, "Over the last twelve months we've seen an undeniable explosion in big data volumes. In addition, the depth of analytics organizations require to gain deeper insights into their business has been rapidly growing. This need for deep analytical processing that when done right, present new opportunities for businesses is also where most stumble. Our Data Analytics Summits allow each customer an opportunity to hear, first hand, how organizations are unlocking analytical secrets across their customer bases, the impact that it has to their business, and how Aster Data is the company that is delivering the market's most innovative and effective solution to ensure success."

Aster Data continues to deliver ground-breaking capabilities to address the big data management and advanced analytics market need. It recently announced Aster Data nCluster 4.6, the latest version of its flagship data analytics server product, also now known as an Analytics Platform, extends the power of SQL-MapReduce analytics to a true hybrid row and column DBMS, enabling richer, high performance analytic applications. The unified SQL-MapReduce analytic framework, advances in in-database analytics together with Aster Data's suite of 1000+ MapReduce-ready analytic functions, delivers a substantial breakthrough in delivering richer, high performance analytics on large data volumes.

The insights from the Big Data Summit attendees are influencing the direction for future summits such as addressing deeper industry-specific solutions. In addition, attendees have said that it's not merely the volume of data, but more importantly their advanced analytical needs that present the biggest opportunities for their organization.

To find out more about the Data Analytics Summit in New York City on November 18 or to register to attend visit http://dataanalyticssummit.com.

About Aster Data
Aster Data is a market leader in big data management and advanced analytics. Aster Data nCluster is the first data-analytics server, a massively parallel processing (MPP) row and column database with an integrated analytics engine to enable ultra-fast, deep analysis of massive data sets. Aster Data's unique "applications-within™" approach allows application logic to exist and execute with the data itself. Termed a "data-analytics server," and now more commonly referred to in the market as an Analytics Platform, Aster Data's solution effectively utilizes Aster Data's patent-pending SQL-MapReduce together with parallelized data processing and applications to address the big data challenge. Companies using Aster Data include Barnes&Noble, Intuit, LinkedIn, comScore, Akamai, Full Tilt Poker, and MySpace. Aster Data is headquartered in San Carlos, California and is backed by Sequoia Capital, JAFCO Ventures, IVP, and Cambrian Ventures, as well as industry visionaries including David Cheriton and Ron Conway.

Aster Data, Aster Data nCluster, SQL-MapReduce, the Aster logo, and Applications-Within™ are registered trademarks of Aster Data. All other brands and trademarks referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

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