Salesforce ties Wave analytics tool to big data platforms

Salesforce today moved to get into the big data analytics game with an announcement that some of the industry's leading Hadoop distributions and other big data platforms will now be integrated with the Wave analytics software it introduced last fall.

The cloud applications company announced partnerships with Hadoop vendors Cloudera and Hortonworks, as well as Google and software analytics platform provider New Relic, to offer connectors between their technologies and the Wave-based Salesforce Analytics Cloud.

Prior to the announcement, Wave users were mostly limited to analyzing data stored in their Salesforce implementations, plus structured data in SAP or Oracle databases and information from selected third-party sources. But with the new connectors, they'll be able to use the application as a front-end tool to dive into a data lake or analyze information in smaller Hadoop systems and the Google Cloud Platform's big data services.

BizApps Today: Salesforce analytics cloud
makes waves at Dreamforce

"We have these incredible big data platforms, but delivering that last mile to the salesperson or the marketer so they know how a specific product is being used, that's been our real challenge," said Keith Bigelow, senior vice president and general manager of the Salesforce Analytics Cloud business unit, during a conference call about the connectors.

Bigelow said the idea is to provide a simple front-end interface to complex big data platforms. The integration will allow data analysts or data engineers to reach into a Hadoop or Google data store with raw machine or unstructured data and pull out a slice of it using a graphical user interface. The data can then be published to Wave, where end users, typically sales and marketing reps, can manipulate it in a desktop or mobile application.

Salesforce has worked with the other four companies to develop connectors between the Analytics Cloud platform and their various data stores. Customers who already have Wave and one of the participating products will be able to access the connectors for no extra charge.

Ed Burns is site editor of SearchBusinessAnalytics. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter: @EdBurnsTT.