Big Data and cloud computing are a perfect fit, but delivering on the potential of infinitely scalable analytics is much easier said than done. The industry is working to change that, however, and a lot of progress is being made.

SAP this week introduced a simplified pricing scheme for its HANA platform that aims to make the in-memory database more accessible to organizations of different sizes. Under the new model, customers can purchase a subscription for a fixed base rate and add premium features such as predictive analytics and spatial processing as needed. Additional memory can be bought through a newly introduced marketplace that also includes a catalog of hundreds of HANA-based apps including Genomic Analyzer, a tool that enables medical researchers to analyze large volumes of data in near real time.

Over in the startup arena, GoodData pulled the curtains back on an end-to-end cloud service for ingesting and processing different types of information from multiple sources. The platform includes connectors for over 50 analytics technologies, including Hadoop, and plugs into existing data integration, workflow and discovery processes to reduce deployment time. On the operations side, it provides version control functionality, allows admins to “propagate changes instantly” and offers governance capabilities for ensuring that the right corporate data is available to the right people at the right time.

On the machine data analytics front, Wall Street darlings Tableau and Splunk joined forces to provide an integrated solution for processing the rapidly growing volumes of information generated by the Internet of Things. Splunk Enterprise has been made available as a data source in Tableau through an ODBC driver, meaning that users of the visualization software can now tap into new sources of information without having to leave their comfort zone and learn another application.

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