Blazent launched a big data platform targeted specifically at the problem of inaccurate and incomplete data within IT - the Blazent Data Intelligence Platform - which can transform enterprise data from hundreds of disparate IT datastores into a single foundation of quality data that IT leaders can count on to optimize the operational and financial performance of IT, and manage risk within their environments.

In an era of increasing complexity and data volume, a typical IT environment is comprised of massive amounts of siloed, incomplete and inaccurate data, resulting in upwards of 40 percent poor data quality and little to no context or visibility for confident decision-making. This data accuracy problem leaves organizations more vulnerable to operational risks that lead to more service outages and increased time to resolution, and data governance challenges that lead to audit pressure and inefficient IT spending. The Blazent Data Intelligence Platform solves these problems by leveraging a new big data engine and a 5-step data evolution process to ensure that, for the first time, IT organizations and service providers have the needed “master source of truth” to fuel IT agility.

“Data quality is a fundamental issue plaguing today’s increasingly heterogeneous and disjointed IT environments,” said Gary Oliver, Chief Executive Officer of Blazent. “Poor IT data quality is the reason that 40 percent of all IT projects fail to achieve targeted benefits, and 30 percent of servers are underutilized, and in many cases, not backed up or secure – leaving organizations challenged in managing risk, providing effective operations and controlling costs. These are the types of business-critical issues that guided us in creating the Data Intelligence Platform, encapsulating 13 years of experience in Master Data Management, Data Governance and Service Management.”

Blazent’s 5-step data evolution process begins with data atomization, which breaks down IT data, regardless of its source, to its most granular level. It then enriches the data with identity management, relationship analysis, purification, and historicity. To create the master source of truth, Blazent integrates with more than 230 discrete data sources, from ITSM systems like ServiceNow to procurement, billing, operational tool stacks, or even shadow IT sources like spreadsheets. Powered by high-performance technologies including Active MQ, Cassandra, Hadoop and Spark, Blazent’s big data engine is optimized for scalability and near real-time data processing.

Effective big data analytics extends the value of Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs) and enables enterprises to maximize their IT and business initiatives. Rather than simply integrating raw data across different data sources, the Blazent Data Intelligence Platform purifies service data with associated people and processes to provide greater context and accuracy as changes are made across disparate systems. This enables enterprises and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to accelerate time to resolution, and reliably make highly precise business decisions anytime, anywhere.

In addition to a newly architected big data engine, Blazent is introducing two new modules: Data Explorer for reporting and GLOVE (Governance, Lifecycle Operational Validation, Expenditure) for IT service governance and auditing. Data Explorer and GLOVE complement Blazent’s current suite of modules, which are designed to solve specific business challenges, including Data Quality Management, Operational Service Validations and Software Inventory Analysis. The introduction of Data Explorer and GLOVE provide the following benefits:

Data Explorer: Provides custom dashboards and reporting based on aggregated data across 230+ data sources, including network monitoring tools, security products and service management offerings such as ServiceNow. Data Explorer provides an intuitive interface, simple configuration and one-click drill down capabilities, allowing users to make fast, data-driven decisions for any related business objective – such as billing, security, or operations.

GLOVE (Governance, Lifecycle Operational Validation, Expenditure): Critical to proper IT governance, GLOVE offers refined analytics which are particularly useful for Managed Service Providers responsible for managing vast IT services and solutions portfolios. GLOVE enables users to visualize the true lifecycle status of billed or allocated entities, and is granular enough to obtain the insights required to effectively govern key auditable areas, such as correct lifecycle status or account expenditures. Users can also run continuous end-to-end IT audits that establish trusted baselines, or identify rouge assets to diagnose over/under-billed services and analyze historical data trends.

“Blazent has diligently remained at the forefront of the world’s largest data-intensive environments, and this release marks the evolution of our technology with our formal entry into big data analytics,” said Michael Ludwig, Chief Product Architect at Blazent. “The Blazent Data Intelligence Platform builds upon our customer-proven solutions with a powerful, new big data engine and data process guaranteed to transform data intelligence into business results.”