MongoDB Delivers The Future To Developers With MongoDB 5.0 And Serverless Atlas

* Application Data Platform Provides Native Time Series Capabilities, Versioned API and Live Resharding to Make Developers More Productive

MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDB), the leading, modern general purpose database platform, today announced a series of revolutionary product enhancements from the keynote stage of MongoDB’s annual conference, MongoDB.live. These updates include the launch and General Availability of MongoDB 5.0 with native time series support, the preview of serverless databases in MongoDB Atlas, and the continued evolution of its industry leading application data platform with enhancements to Atlas Search, Atlas Data Lake, and MongoDB’s end-to-end mobile data solution, Realm.

“MongoDB is the world’s pre-eminent application data platform for building the applications of today and tomorrow. With the end of the global pandemic in sight, enterprises everywhere feel a sense of urgency to use software and data as a competitive advantage. The best way to do this is by giving developers access to technologies that align to the way they think and code to enable high productivity,” said Dev Ittycheria, President & CEO of MongoDB. “Today’s announcements remove even more friction and complexity from the developer experience and enable developers to build innovative and highly scalable applications for a wide range of use cases faster than on any other platform. MongoDB is incredibly popular among developers everywhere, and is used by nearly 27,000 customers around the world to transform their businesses.”

The Latest Generation of Database Most Wanted by Developers

From multi-cloud clusters or serverless instances in Atlas to private and hybrid deployments managed by Ops Manager 5.0 and Kubernetes, no other database gives developers as much freedom. MongoDB 5.0 makes it even easier to support a broader range of workloads, introduces new ways of future-proofing applications, and further enhances privacy and security.

Notable new features include:

Native Time Series collections, clustered indexing, and window functions make it easier, faster, and lower cost to build and run applications like IoT and financial analytics, and to enrich enterprise data with time series measurements.

Seamless Data Redistribution: Live Resharding allows users to change the shard key for collections on-demand as workloads grow and evolve, with no database downtime or complex migrations.

Future-proof Application Compatibility: Developers can now future-proof their applications with the Versioned API. The application lifecycle can be decoupled from the database lifecycle, providing a level of investment protection that is ahead of other databases. Developers can have confidence that their application code will continue to run unchanged for years, without interruption, even as the database is upgraded and improved beneath it.

Multi-cloud privacy controls: MongoDB’s unique Client-Side Field Level Encryption (FLE) now brings some of the strongest data privacy controls to multi-cloud clusters. Backed by always-on auditing and certificate rotation, MongoDB 5.0 helps users maintain a strict security posture with no interruption to applications, and with the freedom to run applications anywhere.

Serverless Database on MongoDB Atlas Now in Preview

Developers can now get the flexible, expressive power of the industry-leading document database with the ease of a serverless model. Serverless instances, now available in preview, support the latest MongoDB capabilities so users never have to worry about backwards compatibility or upgrades. Users simply choose a cloud region to get started, then start building with documents that map directly to objects into code.

“Prior to MongoDB 5.0, the Bosch IoT Insights cloud service relied on a custom solution with its own bespoke data model for time series data. This approach added complexity and friction to both our own sdevelopers and to our customers”, said Erwin Segerer, Software Developer, Bosch.IO. “MongoDB 5.0 and its time series collections radically simplifies our technology stack and improves user experience. IoT data is automatically stored in a highly optimized format that reduces storage consumption while also enabling fast and efficient queries and analytics against the data. As a result users unlock insights faster, no matter if it is time series or non time series data, all while working with a single intuitive and powerful query API.”

Additional Enhancements from MongoDB

Atlas Search now includes Function Scoring which allows users to apply mathematical formulas on fields within documents to influence their relevance, such as popularity or distance. Users can also now define collections of synonyms for a particular search index. By associating similar terms with each other, users can respond to a wider range of user-initiated queries in applications.

MongoDB Realm now supports the Unity game engine. Users can now use Realm to store game data, like scores and player stats, and sync it automatically across devices.  MongoDB is also investing in support for more cross-platform frameworks — the Kotlin Multiplatform and Flutter/Dart SDKs are now both available in Alpha.

MongoDB Charts is now integrated with Atlas Data Lake. Users can now easily visualize rich data stored in Amazon AWS S3 without any data movement, duplication or transformation. By adding Atlas Data Lake as a data source in Charts, users can discover deeper, more meaningful insights in real-time

For the full list of new features and enhancements released at MongoDB .Live 2021 please visit: https://www.mongodb.com/new

About MongoDB                                                       

MongoDB is the leading modern, general purpose database platform, designed to unleash the power of software and data for developers and the applications they build. Headquartered in New York, MongoDB has more than 26,800 customers in over 100 countries. The MongoDB database platform has been downloaded over 175 million times and there have been more than 1.5 million registrations for MongoDB University courses. MongoDB products run on all major cloud providers, on-premises, and on developers laptops.

Organizations That Migrate To Cloud Primarily As A One-Time Cost Savings Activity

* Risk Missing Out on Competitive Advantages, Accenture Report Finds

* Those achieving the most with cloud — “Continuum Competitors” — treat cloud as an operating model for innovation

A new report from Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has identified a select group of organizations that treat cloud as a new operating model to continuously reinvent their businesses using innovative, multi-cloud capabilities — across public, private and edge — realize greater business value, well beyond cost savings.

Based on a survey of nearly 4,000 C-suite executives at both private- and public-sector organizations globally, the report, titled “Ever-ready for Every Opportunity: How to Unleash Competitiveness on the Cloud Continuum,” explains why looking at cloud as a one-time migration to a static destination — essentially as a cheaper, more-efficient data center — is limiting. In fact, a narrow focus on cost savings can actually put organizations at a competitive disadvantage compared to those using cloud more strategically across its many dynamic forms, including public, private and edge.

“Most organizations today deploy some mix of public, private and edge clouds, with little integration between them,” said Karthik Narain, global lead of Accenture Cloud First. “As a result, innovation, data and best practices achieved in one part of the organization aren’t benefitting others — thereby impeding value realization. However, a small percentage of organizations are positioning themselves to reap the greatest value from the cloud by viewing cloud as a continuum of technologies that spans different locations and types of ownership, dynamically supported by cloud-first 5G and software-defined networks to support the ever-changing needs of their business.”

The report reveals that while organizations plan to migrate more than two-thirds of their workloads to cloud, on average, over the next three to five years, only half are using the full potential of cloud in its various forms to transform their day-to-day business operations, carry out knowledge work and modernize applications to meet business needs.

Accenture defines the organizations leading the way in cloud as “Continuum Competitors.” These organizations — about 12-15% of respondents, depending on region — stand out by extending the experience they gained from public cloud to their private data centers and edge locations to transform daily business operations. As a result, they achieve substantial gains from their continued cloud engagement and outperform competitors. Continuum Competitors are also much better positioned to withstand future shocks, according to the research.

Continuum Competitors include organizations such as Carlsberg, for example. Beyond operational cost savings, the Danish multinational brewer cites its freedom to innovate and experiment as one of cloud’s key advantages, enabling it to launch new initiatives and campaigns in hours, rather than months. Continuum Competitors are also much better positioned to withstand future shocks, according to the research.

“A company’s future competitiveness hinges on choosing the right type of cloud for the right applications and cloud-based services — such as artificial intelligence, smart contact centers, edge computing, robotic computing, extended reality and others — from across the continuum and implementing the advanced practices needed to leverage those technologies,” Narain said. “By using cloud-first strategies, companies can build better customer experiences, smarter business processes and more sustainable products.”

Unlike organizations whose cloud efforts focus primarily on one-time migration to cloud for cost savings and efficiency, Continuum Competitors are:

two to three times more likely to innovate, automate and re-engineer knowledge work;

achieving between 1.2x (North America) and 2.7x (Europe) greater cost reduction than organizations focused mainly on data migration;

aiming to achieve more operational and financial goals, including targeting up to 50% more business measures, such as increasing customers and going to market faster than their peers; and

up to three times more likely to use the cloud for at least two sustainability goals, such as using green energy sources, designing for lower power consumption, and using servers more efficiently to reduce energy consumption.

By studying Continuum Competitors’ use of cloud, Accenture has identified four winning cloud approaches applicable to any organization:

Know where you want the continuum to take you. An organization must first develop a strategy with a vision that clearly states the core values and future aspirations, identifies competitive vulnerabilities and classifies capabilities relative to where the company is today and its future aspirations. They must develop these strategies by taking into account the constant evolution of cloud capabilities across the continuum.

Establish cloud practices to support and augment your technologies. Organizations need to couple technology adoption with practices that bring discipline and help change non-technology areas at the pace of computational improvements. Agility is the most critical mindset to being a Continuum Competitor; it infuses cloud-first apps, talent transformation, information technology experimentation and compute awareness, among other areas.? 

Accelerate innovation to deliver exceptional experiences. Continuum Competitors prioritize their investments in one area: experience. They use a combination of human-centered design and cloud-based technologies such as edge computing to rethink experience to push it closer to where their customers, partners and employees engage. This is done by driving the experience mindset throughout the organization, including products and services, employee experience and delivery models.

Provide continuous strategic commitment. Leadership needs to establish business objectives, set appropriate risk levels and promote a culture of agility and growth. Organizations must also recognize the “all-hands” nature of the challenge: everyone across the organization needs to be informed of the cloud’s ever-improving potential and best practices.

Accenture’s “Ever-ready for Every Opportunity: How to Unleash Competitiveness on the Cloud Continuum” research arrives at a time when organizations have been forced by the pandemic to provide their customers with unique experiences and serve them in new and virtual ways. Prior research from Accenture found that companies that scaled technology innovation during COVID-19 are growing revenue five times faster than lagging adopters of technology innovation.

About the Research 

In late 2020 and early 2021, Accenture surveyed nearly 4,000 C-suite executives, in both information technology (IT) and non-IT roles, across 25 countries and 16 industries. The research — which included interviews, case study research and economic modelling — focused on collecting data on adoption and scaling of technologies associated with cloud, each organization’s cloud journey, strategy, and goals, management practices around cloud, multiple measures of financial and operational performance, and the impact of cloud on innovation and sustainability outcomes.

About Accenture 

Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services — all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 569,000 people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace the power of change to create value and shared success for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities.

Star Health Study Reveals Reduction In Mortality, ICU Stay And Treatment Cost Among Vaccinated Patients

Ø  First of its kind study among COVID-19 patients done 42 days after introduction of vaccination drive in India to understand the benefits of the vaccination

Ø  Vaccination reduced ICU stay by 66% and mortality by 81%

Ø  Mean hospital expense was 24% less in vaccinated patients

A first of its kind retrospective cohort study on impact of vaccination among Covid-19 patients by Star Health and Allied Insurance, one of the leading standalone health Insurance company in India, unveiled the significant impacts of vaccination among individuals 45 years and above. The study concluded that there was a marked reduction in the total hospitalization expenses by approximately 24%, the average length of stay (ALOS) by a mean of 2.1 days, ICU requirement by 66% and a reduction of approximately 81% in mortality among patients who had completed two doses of vaccination.

The study was conducted during the second wave (March & April 2021) and considered a sample size of 3,820 hospitalized patients from across India who were 45 years and above. The cohort study revealed that the average cost of hospitalization of the unvaccinated group was Rs.2.77 lakh while the vaccinated group recorded an average cost of Rs.2.1 lakh. The reduction is cost was due to factors like reduced need of ICU requirement and reduction in the length of hospital stay from an average of 7 days among unvaccinated to an average of 4.9 days for the vaccinated group.

Speaking on the study, Dr. S Prakash, Managing Director, Star Health and Allied Insurance said, “The beginning of 2021 saw a breakthrough in vaccine discovery against COVID-19 making it the fastest vaccine discovery till date. Our aim was to measure and understand in exact terms the impact of Covid-19 vaccination in patients who contracted the illness 14 days after the second dose versus unvaccinated patients, thus making it a unique research in its own right.“

In the wake of COVID-19, most of the studies conducted so far have reported an impact of vaccination among the common public while Star Health Insurance’s cohort study gives exclusivity to patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The main purpose of this study has not only been to understand the medical benefit but also financial implications.

Dr. Madhumathi Ramakrishnan, Joint Vice President Star Health and Allied Insurance said, “Our study covered pan India data of the patients affected by COVID-19. The aim was to assess the medical and financial implications of vaccination. Our study concluded that, the ones who had taken the vaccination had a clear advantage over the non-vaccinated as we witnessed a significant difference in parameters like hospital stay, cost of treatment and death due to infection."

The cohort study surveyed customers of Star Health and Allied Insurance Company who were admitted for Covid-19 treatment in 1,104 hospitals across the country and found that the ALOS, need for ICU and reduction in costs also holds true for patients with comorbidities as well. While the need for ICU for patients with comorbidities fell from a whopping 9.4% to 5% amongst those vaccinated, the treatment cost also reduced by nearly 15%.

“However, the study also revealed that over 57% of patients among the unvaccinated group were hesitant to take the vaccine due to fear, ignorance or more worryingly, social factors and disinterest! There is an urgent need to address this and we hope that through this study we will be able to highlight the benefits of the vaccine, educate and motivate the public to get vaccinated soon,” added Dr. Prakash.

Conducted and concluded during the early stages of vaccination drive, the study noted that nearly 86% amongst those surveyed had not taken the vaccination and amongst these 43% did not have any valid reason for not taking the jab.

Star Health believes that the only way to mitigate a third wave is to increase vaccination among the population, host active demystification programs and campaigns through community engagement to reach rural and urban population alike.

About Star Health and Allied Insurance Co. Ltd

Star Health and Allied Insurance Co Ltd commenced its operations in 2006 as India’s first Standalone Health Insurance Company with business interests in Health, Personal Accident and Overseas Travel Insurance. We use our vast resources to focus on service excellence, and product innovation to deliver the best to our customers. Star Health has been providing innovative health insurance products to individuals, families, and corporates directly and through various channels – agents, brokers, online etc., Star Health is also a prominent Bancassurance player with long standing relationship with various banks. 

Rotary clubs In India, Tata Trusts To Collaborate On Multi-Thematic Interventions To Advance Socio-Economic Indicators Across India

* Work in Healthcare, Cancer Care, Nutrition, Rural Uplift, Livelihoods, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene, and Education

* Collaboration to supplement efforts towards strengthening the nation

Rotary and Tata Trusts today announced a five-year collaboration to advance socio-economic indicators through multi-thematic interventions across India. The collaboration will scale efforts in multiple areas like Healthcare, Cancer Care, Covid Care, Nutrition, Rural Uplift, Livelihoods, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene and Education, among others.

The announcement follows a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Mr. Mehrab Irani, Group CFO, Tata Trusts, and Mr. Ashok Mahajan, Chairman, Rotary India Humanity Foundation (RIHF), in the presence of Rotary International’s President (2021-22), Mr. Shekhar Mehta, and Mr. N. Srinath, CEO, Tata Trusts, among other dignitaries on 17 June 2021.

Mr. Shekhar Mehta, Rotary International President (2021-2022), said, “Solving real problems takes real commitment and vision. Each year, Rotary members invest hundreds of millions of dollars and countless volunteer hours to promote health, peace and prosperity in communities across the globe. We are proud and privileged to partner with an organization that shares similar values and ethos to serve the world. The partnership between Rotary and Tata Trusts will focus on quality interventions for significant development across water and sanitation, health, education, Covid-19 relief, economic empowerment, and education with an added focus on women and children across India. Rotary has successfully worked in these focus areas before and with this partnership with Tata Trusts, we are excited to scale our impact and reach to communities in most need.”

Mr. N. Srinath, Chief Executive Officer, Tata Trusts, said, “For Tata Trusts, it is a matter of great pride to be able to come together with Rotary in India. We share a common vision, value system, commitment to society and a common willingness to do better. Both of us are working in areas of national importance, particularly for citizens at the bottom of the pyramid.”

Since more than a century, Tata Trusts and Rotary have endeavoured to contribute to the larger goal of nation-building through multi-thematic programmes executed at scale in geographies that require immediate intervention. The interventions, designed with the communities, aim to enhance socio-economic welfare and aid the transition to more ecologically cohesive practices in a sustainable way.

Addressing all 17 SDGs of the United Nations, and in line with the Government of India’s vision, Rotary and Tata Trusts’ programmes are driven by their desire to create impact that is deep, wide and sustainable by strengthening communities through pointed interventions, supplemented by technology and data, relevant to their needs.

About Tata Trusts:

Since inception in 1892, Tata Trusts, India’s oldest philanthropic organisation, has played a pioneering role in bringing about an enduring difference in the lives of the communities it serves. Guided by the principles and the vision of proactive philanthropy of the Founder, Jamsetji Tata, the Trusts’ purpose is to catalyse development in the areas of health, nutrition, education, water, sanitation and hygiene, livelihood, digital transformation, migration and urban habitat, social justice and inclusion, environment and energy, skill development, sports, and arts and culture. The Trusts’ programmes, achieved through direct implementation, partnerships and grant making, are marked by innovations, relevant to the country. For more information, please visit http://tatatrusts.org/

LinkedIn: Tata Trusts Twitter: @tatatrusts Facebook: Tata Trusts Instagram: tata_trusts

About Rotary:

Rotary brings together a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to tackling the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges. We connect 1.2 million members from more than 36,000 Rotary clubs in almost every country in the world. Their service improves lives both locally and internationally, from helping those in need in their own communities to working toward a polio-free world.

Atos Takes Data Sharing To Next Level With The Atos Digital Hub

* New accelerator for digital collaboration brings together multiple industry players in shared and transparent ecosystem platforms

At its annual ‘Atos Technology Days’ event, Atos today announced the launch of a major initiative that positions the Group as a main actor in the growing data economy and outlines its strategic vision for the coming years: “Atos Digital Hub”, a one-of-a-kind solution whose primary objective is to serve as an accelerator for the building of ecosystem platforms. Based on the observation that data is still too siloed within and across organizations and that value creation often lies in data federation, Atos' approach is to provide trusted digital ecosystem hubs for organizations – with equity, reliability, and security at the heart.

When it comes to data value, rarely does any one entity hold all the necessary "pieces of the puzzle". However, many organizations remain steadfast in their belief that the pieces they do hold have a differentiating value. Hence their reluctance to openly share data without a defined path to monetization, not to mention the dynamics of data privacy regulations. Despite this, the ability to collaborate with an ecosystem and share data is providing great flexibility to businesses – enabling them to quickly adapt to changes and to satisfy new customer demands which no one entity could answer alone.

In this context, the Atos Digital Hub aims to enable and orchestrate value chains within extended data-driven ecosystems. Ones in which stakeholders of the ecosystem (organizations, partners, suppliers and customers) can build, manage and monetize services with transparency and contractual guarantees of how data will be used and protected. In addition to using analytics and AI to help unlock the value of data, the framework allows for the creation of business services based on federated data, with a set of predefined blueprints supporting diverse industry models.

As part of this solution, Atos will act as a trusted intermediary and neutral player which operates and orchestrates the platform – guaranteeing the required level of trust and ensuring that all platform participants are treated fairly.

“While the idea of data monetization is not new, trusted exchanges are rare, so Atos, by using all its skills and technologies from across the Group, is creating the next level of business platforms to help partners to collaborate and generate a better return on their respective data and services. It’s important to highlight that Atos is working with data and cloud communities, such as GAIA-X data space consortiums and IDSA partners, to foster innovative business solutions which use fair and sovereign usage of data,” said Gard Little, Vice President, Global Services Markets and Trends, IDC.

“We aim to support the multi-party digital economy by bringing value and trust to the market. This is not just about technology, but also about realizing that enterprises work as part of business communities. We enable groups of industry players to act together in a single ecosystem, with the ability to share data assets in a frictionless manner and work towards a common business goal,” said Sophie Proust, Chief Technology Officer, Atos. “We must act now and start working with existing best practices, establish trusted data ecosystems, and refine as we learn.”

Atos Digital Hub is a technology foundation provided by Atos, which allows for the creation of tailored platforms for a wide spectrum of activities and sectors, such as:

Healthcare and life sciences: offering more personalized and efficient care paths for patients thanks to interoperable clinical care platforms that enable a wide community of healthcare professionals and healthcare institutions, laboratories or government agencies to exchange valuable health information – further advancing the development of healthcare standards and overcoming system disparities.

Electric vehicle charging: federating data from energy suppliers, charging station operators and car manufacturers, so that users can get seamless access to any charging and related payment service.

Tourism: creating a collaborative environment which aggregates the offers from a wide range of local tourism players (flight services, restaurants, shops, events venues) thereby increasing the brand value of the destination and generating more revenue across the ecosystem.

Decarbonization: allowing enterprises to simplify and automate the collection, calculation, reporting, data analysis and visualization of their carbon emissions across entire supply chains; and working with audit and certification bodies and local governments, to establish a transparent approach to data sharing and exchange.

Atos puts decarbonization at the heart of its approach, in line with its journey to carbon neutrality, and has recently launched the most comprehensive end-to-end decarbonization capabilities on the market to enable and accelerate its clients’ journeys to net zero.

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 105,000 employees and annual revenue of over € 11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high-performance computing, the group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos operates under the brands Atos and Atos|Syntel. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

Pay By Link Transactions In Contactless Payments Grow 6X In The Second Wave Of Pandemic; Reveals Mswipe

* Ecommerce driving link based payments in metros; groceries in non-metros

Payment links via SMS or WhatsApp have emerged as the front runner in contactless payments in the second wave of the pandemic with Mswipe registering a record 6X growth in Pay By Link based (PBL) transactions. PBL transactions grew from 2.37lakh in March 2020 to 12.55lakh in March 2021.

A high adoption has been observed across metro cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai and Hyderabad, and non-metros such as Kanchipuram Tiruvallur, Coimbatore, Vadodara and Goa.

According to the findings, Mswipe’s merchants in metros are seeing a high adoption for PBL transactions from their customers across various segments including e-commerce, auto accessories, mobile phones and groceries. On the other hand, in non-metros, merchants are witnessing higher traction for link based payments for groceries, electronic items such as mobile phones, purchase of travel tickets, clothing and at restaurants.

Mswipe, India’s leading end-to-end digital enabler of MSMEs, studied the pattern of contactless payments across its merchant base. The Total Payment Value (TPV) noted through PBL registered a 4X growth from INR 107cr in March 2020 to INR 400cr in March 2021. The average ticket size of a PBL based transaction was around INR 3,000.

Ankit Bhatnagar, Head of Product, Mswipe said, “The high adoption of Pay By Link noted by our merchants definitely signals greater choice, flexibility and convenience that has been brought to the checkout stage. With Pay By Link we have brought two key benefits to contactless payments – it makes it possible for the merchant to collect payments remotely at the time of the delivery and it also gives the customer the convenience of not having to be present at the point of delivery. Despite the second wave of pandemic resulting in extended lockdowns and largely remote delivery of products, Mswipe merchants were able to have higher conversions at checkout through the link based payments.” 

Mswipe is the only player which has a complete range of digital payment solutions for MSMEs in India including UPI QR, NFC based Tap and Pay, POS and Payment Link. The largest POS acquirer in India with 6.75 lakh POS and 1.1 million QR merchants, Mswipe is also the fastest growing issuer with its prepaid Moneyback Card.

About Mswipe

Mswipe aims to be India’s largest financial services platform for SMEs by providing seamless, omnichannel digital payments and other value-added financial services. It is the largest independent mobile POS merchant acquirer and network provider with 6.75 lakh POS and 1.1 million QR merchants across the country. Mswipe offers a host of payment acceptance services for SME’s enabling them to accept - cards, wallets, mobile payment apps and bank apps, contactless and QR payments. Headquartered in Mumbai, Mswipe began operations in 2011. Its key investors include B Capital, UC-RNT, Falcon Edge Capital, Matrix Capital Partners, DSG Partners and Epiq Capital.

Zoho Advances BI And Analytics Market With New Self-Service Platform; Transforms Relationships Between Businesses And Their Data

* Platform delivers new AI-powered data preparation and management capabilities, deeper augmented analytics, improved data visualization and analysis to create actionable, industry-leading business insights

Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, today announced its new Business Intelligence (BI) Platform — an AI-driven data analytics solution empowering businesses to surface precise and actionable insights through self-service data preparation and augmented analytics. Zoho also launched Zoho DataPrep, an augmented self-service data preparation and pipeline service.

Zoho's end-to-end self-service BI Platform, which combines newly-launched Zoho DataPrep with an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics, enables organizations to cleanse, unify, and analyze cross-departmental data, obtain an encyclopedic view of the company, and ultimately move toward a more competitive business strategy based on real-time insights.

"For data to be a true catalyst of business growth, there can't be any gaps in the collection, management, or analysis process," said Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Co-founder, Zoho Corp. "Too few BI platforms in the market excel in both data preparation and analytics, which leaves businesses with weak—or worse, flawed—insights. Zoho's BI Platform is industry-leading because it ensures organizations are acting on legitimate data, which can be effectively leveraged to determine new revenue streams, refocus funds, drive productivity, and overall gain a competitive edge among peers in their market."

Zoho's BI Platform brings together pre-built, visual dashboards, comprehensive data integrations, data preparation, augmented and embedded BI, security and privacy capabilities, flexible deployment models (cloud or on-premise), and scalability. Below are four standout pillars of this platform, which allow businesses to perform better and remain competitive in their industries:

1) Augmented Data Prep and Management - Zoho DataPrep, a new application, is an AI and machine learning-driven self-service data preparation tool. The addition of Zoho DataPrep to the BI Platform allows business users to easily create and manage data pipelines that enable them to integrate, model, cleanse, transform, enrich, and catalogue data before making it ready for analysis.

2) Data Stories - Zoho's BI Platform now offers an integrated enterprise portal builder (Zoho Sites) and presentation software (Zoho Show). Embedding live reports and dashboards into a website or presentation allows administrators to wrap additional context around data and foster more immersive discussion on business matters. Data Stories reduces friction within an organization, so that businesses can be data-driven without needing to learn new tools.

3) Augmented Analytics - Ask Zia, Zoho's conversational AI, enables business users--with or without technical know-how--to surface data through natural language querying. Additionally, the all-new Zia Insights provides textual narration of key insights from reports and dashboards that significantly reduces the time and effort required to explore data and glean insights. Zia Insights also includes what-if capability, enabling scenario analysis for effective decision-making.

4) Marketplace - Through Zoho Marketplace, an apps marketplace, Zoho is enabling partners to develop and publish analytical apps and integrations to complement Zoho Analytics users, thereby strengthening the BI and Analytics platform. Another dimension is the launch of deep native analytical apps, with domain-specific advanced analytics, in third-party marketplaces such as Shopify, ServiceNow and Atlassian.

The new Zoho BI Platform is built for scale and is extensible to more than 250 data sources—including Zendesk, HubSpot, Microsoft, Mailchimp, Stripe and Google—allowing businesses to integrate and analyze data sourced from diverse third-party systems. Blending with outside data sources has always been one of the key strengths of Zoho Analytics, and a value demonstrated by the fact that 60% of the existing users have chosen it as their BI tool while solely running on non-Zoho applications and data sources. 

The BI platform gives users on-demand insight into operational data to inform critical business decisions with the support of Zia, Zoho's AI tool. Zia augments data preparation and visualization by using natural language querying and generation, text narration of key insights from reports and dashboards, and cognitive and advanced analytics. These self-service and real-time capabilities make it possible to capture actionable data insights to boost operational efficiency and productivity.

With more than 50,000 organizations already using it, Zoho Analytics has consistently been one of the company's fastest growing products. Within the last two years, Zoho Analytics has grown by 30%  YoY with a 40%YoY increase in the enterprise segment. The application has seen a 10% jump in customers switching from competitive platforms. Also, 50% of the customers have chosen Zoho Analytics after evaluating multiple competitive BI products. With this new BI Platform, Zoho expects above 45% YOY revenue growth.

Customer Statement

Spykar, the popular apparel brand, is a Zoho Analytics user. "Cost and usability were key factors for us in selecting Zoho Analytics over Power BIand QlikView. Zoho Analytics gives us precise insight on which stores had the highest sales, and which styles are preferred by our customers by city and by state. We now have a good visibility on the exact stock levels in each of the leading multi-branded stores across India on any typical day. This was not possible before. Now, we are able to track the sales and stock levels in over 900 stores across India at any given time, which means we can send stock accordingly or give better discounts to the stores making the highest sales. With the new 5.0 release of Zoho Analytics, the platform is complete with Zoho DataPrep and advanced augmented capabilities, including Zia conversations and Zia Insight. I'm sure Zoho DataPrep will further reduce our time spent in preparing our data and I can get my sales update through Zia anytime, anywhere," said Rupendra Nigam, Vice President of IT, Spykar India.

Analyst Statement:

“Self-service data preparation, computer-augmented analysis and in-context story telling are three important, emerging capabilities that set industry-leading BI and analytics platforms apart. The ability to build and share analytic apps is yet another differentiator, so I’m particularly excited to see Zoho enabling customers to publish breakthrough, data-driven applications,” said Doug Henschen, Principal Analyst at Constellation Research

Pricing and Availability

Zoho BI Platform, which includes Zoho Analytics and Zoho DataPrep, is available immediately in two versions, cloud and on-premise. For monthly option, the cloud version is ₹250 per user, per month. The on-premise version is ₹1,800 per user, per month. For annual option, the cloud version is ₹3,000 per user, per year. The on-premise version is ₹21,600 per user, per year.

Zoho DataPrep is also available as a standalone. The standard plan starts at ₹2,400 per month for 2 million rows including 3 users while the enterprise plan is highly customizable and the pricing is based on the customization.