Autonomy says it applies advanced meaning-based technology to “transform database” market
Autonomy Corporation plc, a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, announced IDOL Structured Probabilistic Engine (SPE), a new product that applies Autonomy's meaning-based technology to databases to deliver a new level of intelligence to this $18 billion market.
Cambridge-HQed Autonomy built its business on pioneering the market for understanding unstructured data, and over 20,000 customers depend on Autonomy technology for a range of business applications.
Now Autonomy is applying the same technologies to transform the database market, by turning legacy RDBMSs into next-generation probabilistic inference engines that can understand "shades of gray."
Corporations are dependent on RDBMS technology to power literally every type of business software application. While databases perform operations, the software doesn't understand the meaning of the data itself and is limited to viewing the world as black or white.
With the use of advanced probabilistic methodologies, Autonomy delivers new levels of database processing intelligence, enabling the software to suggest results, even when an exact match doesn't exist in the database. This technology represents a radical shift in the intelligence businesses can gain from information, by delivering the ability to understand the "meaning" in the data in the billions of corporate databases in use today.
A self-learning solution, IDOL SPE can automatically make connections in the data that would otherwise need to be interpreted by human beings. The solution analyzes interactions, usage, and multiple datasets to spot patterns in structured data and make non-obvious predictions. Unlike business intelligence solutions that require building and maintaining complex cubes that operate outside the database, IDOL SPE brings probabilistic inference into existing databases.
For instance, an airline can leverage IDOL SPE to improve the online customer experience and increase sales. A customer searching for a flight from New York to San Francisco at a date and time when all flights are sold out will automatically be offered an alternative airport such as Oakland or San Jose, rather than returning "no results" to the customer's search. IDOL SPE infers the result from patterns in the data and its usage without the need for scripts or geographic information.
CEO Mike Lynch said: "Autonomy was built on one fundamental technology, IDOL, that brought meaning to human friendly information.
"IDOL SPE is our second fundamental technology and ushers the database market into the era of Meaning Based Computing. Organizations are now able to free data from rigid structures to deliver relevance and understanding that can impact literally every type of computing application."
