Big data, big data processing

Hendershot, Steve . Crain's Chicago Business ; Chicago  Vol. 37, Iss. 26,  (Jun 30, 2014): 4.

ProQuest document link

ABSTRACT
Yet several of these giants, including WellPoint Inc. and American Express Co., already are customers, each paying
the startup $95,000 a month for its flagship data-processing product, zFusion. Because big companies can
generate more than 10 billion data points per day, and their own mainframes are ill-equipped to quickly translate
those inputs into meaningful analysis.

FULL TEXT
 
The whiteboard beside Chris O'Malley's desk, next to drawings of Jesus and Ronald Reagan, includes the names of
dozens of America's largest corporations. It seems like a pie-in-the-sky list of sales prospects considering that Mr.
O'Malley's company, VelociData Inc., has just six employees in its River North headquarters.
Yet several of these giants, including WellPoint Inc. and American Express Co., already are customers, each paying
the startup $95,000 a month for its flagship data-processing product, zFusion.
Why? Because big companies can generate more than 10 billion data points per day, and their own mainframes are
ill-equipped to quickly translate those inputs into meaningful analysis. VelociData targets a section of the big-data
continuum called extraction, transformation and loading. It brings data from disparate sources and formats them
harmoniously so that analytics programs can parse them effectively.
Indianapolis-based health insurer WellPoint Inc. required up to 16 hours to sync certain patient data across its
network. The problem partly was due to different systems used by its various Blue Cross Blue Shield subsidiaries.
With zFusion, the process takes less than a minute.
"I'm used to selling products that are maybe 15 percent or 30 percent better than what people are used to," says
Mr. O'Malley, 51. "I'm not used to this--something that's better by an order of magnitude."
Mr. O'Malley spent 24 years at software-maker CA Inc. of Islandia, New York, working his way up to CEO of one of
its acquired companies, Nimsoft Inc. In 2012, he left and joined VelociData's board. He became VelociData's CEO
last July, just as the company announced the receipt of $10 million from three investors, including former Motorola
Inc. CEO Chris Galvin.
"It took me 45 minutes to say I'd be in," Mr. Galvin says. "VelociData may be a niche product, but it's a rifle shot that
can ease the data bottleneck."
VelociData's hybrid hardware-plus-software solution was developed at Washington University in St. Louis and first
applied to high-frequency trading through St. Louis-based Exegy Inc. VelociData spun out of Exegy in 2011. The
core intellectual property was transferred to VelociData, and Exegy now essentially is a VelociData customer.
VelociData's 20-person engineering team still is based in St. Louis, but Mr. O'Malley moved its head office to
Chicago in November.
Analysts are impressed by its technology.
"The thing that surprises me more than anything else isn't that VelociData has done this; it's that more people
haven't tried," says IT industry analyst Robin Bloor, founder of Bloor Research in London. VelociData has little
direct competition, Mr. Bloor says, though IBM Corp.'s PureData product has similar underlying technology and
could evolve into a competitor. PureData is based on technology developed by Netezza Corp., which Armonk, New
York-based IBM purchased for $1.78 billion in 2010.

PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 1 of 3

That means Mr. O'Malley might have to act fast. But that's already VelociData's overall ethos. Speed, after all, is
pretty much the point.

DETAILS

Subject: Software; Big Data; Product development

Business indexing term: Subject: Big Data Product development

Location: Chicago Illinois United States--US

Company / organization: Name: WellPoint Inc; NAICS: 524114

Publication title: Crain's Chicago Business; Chicago

Volume: 37

Issue: 26

First page: 4

Publication year: 2014

Publication date: Jun 30, 2014

Publisher: Crain Communications, Incorporated

Place of publication: Chicago

Country of publication: United States, Chicago

Publication subject: Business And Economics

ISSN: 01496956

e-ISSN: 15577902

CODEN: CCHBDB

Source type: Magazine

Language of publication: English

Document type: PERIODICAL

ProQuest document ID: 1549519142

Document URL: https://www.proquest.com/magazines/big-data-

processing/docview/1549519142/se-2?accountid=150506

PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 2 of 3

 Copyright: Copyright 2014 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Last updated: 2021-09-10

Database: Research Library

Database copyright  2021 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved.

Terms and Conditions Contact ProQuest

PDF GENERATED BY PROQUEST.COM Page 3 of 3