Streaming Analytics – The Silver Bullet for Predictive Business Decisions

by Bernd Gross, CTO of Software AG

Whether companies use different transaction systems in their various specialist areas or want more transparency in their supply chain, powerful streaming analytics solutions enable companies to gain valuable insights from their data—and thus support them in achieving their digitalization goals. Streaming analytics enables companies to gain real-time insights from large and rapidly changing volumes of data and allows them to predict what will happen next. Risks and opportunities are identified immediately so that the company can react optimally to them.

Not just for IT professionals - self service is key for adoption

Meanwhile, even complex software is no longer just a matter for IT specialists, but also involves employees without programming skills. Intuitive user interfaces, for example, enable business analysts to use today's powerful tools. Streaming analytics thus increases the efficiency of processes—especially if the solution does not require any programming on the part of the customer. Even non-IT specialists can create precise analysis scenarios with the help of an easy-to-use interface in the platform. Graphically displayed APIs enable rapid application development even without programming knowledge. The use of solution libraries to accelerate application delivery is becoming more and more common and encourages the development of individual approaches for companies to quickly develop the appropriate applications themselves as needed.

Streaming analytics (aka real time analytics) becomes mainstream in almost any industry

But how is streaming analytics actually applied? The retail industry, for instance, uses streaming analytics to obtain real-time data on customer purchasing behavior and to optimize customer journeys. Ultimately, this makes the customer's buying experience comprehensible to marketers. In the financial industry, streaming analytics helps to stay ahead of the fast-moving forex markets. It also makes it easier and more efficient to detect suspected fraud. A company's distribution channels use streaming analytics to provide greater transparency and to help in product searches. Using streaming analytics, you can add your own business logic to your solution for immediate processing of incoming data - for example from IoT devices or other data sources. These user-defined operations can, for example, alert applications of new incoming data, create new operations based on the received data (such as sending an alarm when a threshold for a sensor is exceeded), or trigger operations on devices or machines or processes. Based on self service capabilities - which empowers business users - the adoption of streaming analytics is growing across any industry.

Exploit the full potential of your data with streaming analytics

Thanks to streaming analytics technology, companies are able to keep track of their data at all times. Real-time analytics is therefore crucial for companies, enabling them to generate added value from their data and thus achieve a maximum business outcome. It is the Silver Bullet for predictive business decisions.