The big data analytics platform vendor will add more data connectors and advance data visualization capabilities as enterprises' need for more insights from data continues to grow.
Incorta on Wednesday introduced the 5.0 release of its namesake platform, revealing a series of new capabilities designed to advance the vendor's Direct Data Mapping technology.
General availability is set for April.
Incorta, based in San Mateo, Calif., has built out technology intended to manage and accelerate data management from different sources to enable analytics and business intelligence.
The Incorta Direct Data Mapping Platform integrates an approach that aims to provide a unified view of data across disparate sources, including data lakes as well as more traditional sources of data such as relational databases.
With the Incorta 5.0 update, the vendor is providing new data connectors to make it easier to directly connect data sources. The update also includes improved data visualization tools as well as an in-memory SQL engine to accelerate data queries.
Dave Menninger, an analyst at Ventana Research, said one of the real advantages of Incorta is the way it reduces the need for a separate data engineering effort.
Several enhancements in 5.0 are related to speeding things up, which is important since users always want performance improvements, Menninger said. While the performance gains are key benefit for the 5.0 release, the addition of more data connectors is the most important feature, he added.
Our research shows that data access and preparation is the most time-consuming part of the analytics process.
Dave MenningerAnalyst, Ventana Research
"Our research shows that data access and preparation is the most time-consuming part of the analytics process," Menninger said. "From that perspective, the expansion of the number of data sources that can be accessed is the most significant new feature in 5.0 because it makes the platform applicable to many more organizations."
More data connectors
Matthew Halliday, co-founder and vice president of product strategy at Incorta, explained that before the 5.0 release, there were about 40 data connectors in the platform. With 5.0, the number of data connector has risen to 200, spanning a variety of new sources including Google Sheets, Gmail and DocuSign.
Halliday noted that Incorta already had a software development kit that enabled users to put together their own data connectors for any given data source. The new data connectors are pre-built and packaged tools that create an easier path to data connection with a point-and-click approach for users.
"The big value that Incorta provides is that we can bring data sets together and show them in a single pane of glass to be able to get full visibility of data with context," Halliday said.
Incorta 5 updates include new data visualization capabilities.
Boosting data visualization and SQL queries
Incorta 5 also introduces what Halliday referred to as a new analyzer experience. He explained that the analyzer experience is where users build insights with dashboard visualization tables.
The new visualization capabilities are powered on the back end by new coding that uses the open source React framework. The goal of the new visualization features is to give business users an easy-to-use model for understanding and putting data to use.
While the data visualization capability is aimed at business users, Incorta 5 also provides new features for advanced data analysts who want to execute complex SQL queries against data.
"We're allowing the more seasoned and experienced data analysts who might want to do more complex analytics to be able to do that," Halliday said.
The future of Incorta
Looking ahead, Scott Jones, CEO of Incorta, said he sees the 5.0 release as a foundation for future business growth because it addresses some of the key challenges organizations are facing.
Jones joined Incorta as CEO in February 2020 and said he has spent much of the last two months talking to customers.
Jones said the customers he has spoken with have told him they want to do more with data. The enhanced data visualization capabilities in Incorta 5 enables will be helpful for that, he said.
"Customers really want us to focus more on the ease of use and then, obviously, connecting to more data sources," Jones said. "You can never satisfy all the requirements, but certainly with Incorta 5, we move the needle in a very material way in that area."
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