The analytics wave is expanding to new frontiers as intense competition drives vendors outside their traditional comfort zones. Last week saw good examples of that repositioning as Datameer Inc. pulled the curtains back on a cloud-based implementation of its business intelligence platform.

The new option bundles the software with one of two managed Hadoop services of the customer’s choice to provide an environment for ordinary knowledge workers to crunch vast amounts of unstructured data. Datameer Professional incorporates the full gamut of capabilities from the on-premise version, including the pre-built connectors and analytic features as well as the expansive visualization functionality that sets it apart from the pack.

The launch continues the trend of business intelligence providers offering customers more flexibility in how they consume their software, which has become a competitive necessity with the rise of cloud services. A parallel phenomenon is unfolding in traditional industries such as manufacturing, where the explosion of interest around data insights stemming from the increasing accessibility of analytics is forcing traditional players to jump on the bandwagon.

Hitachi Ltd. became the latest to join the the fray on the morning that Datameer revealed its new service with the acquisition of Pentaho Inc., another new-generation analytics vendor that is focused on making the capabilities of technologies such as Hadoop more accessible to business users. The deal will provide the foundation for the Japanese industrial giant’s ambitious vision to unify its different products under a comprehensive data fabric for building value-added applications.

As Hitachi swooped up Pentaho, another company that could be an attractive acquisition candidate also unveiled a landmark update of its own data management system. Catalogic Inc. launched the second version of its ECX intelligent copy data management platform to help organizations trace and remove redundant files, which represent a growing burden on modern storage environments.

The software plugs into the snapshotting system of the host array and allows administrators to chain operations together into workflows for handling data copies. That makes it possible to ensure that duplicate objects don’t stick around taking up capacity longer than they’re needed. Complementing the automation features is an extensive set of built-in monitoring capabilities that enable practitioners to address pee-existing redundancies and prevent more inefficiencies from piling up in the future.

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