Accelerate Time to Insight with InterSystems IRIS Adaptive Analytics

To be successful, organizations need to provide their business users and data analysts with the ability to gain insights into every aspect of the enterprise. InterSystems IRIS® Adaptive Analytics extends InterSystems IRIS data platform to deliver faster time to insight and better business decisions for a wide range of users across the enterprise at scale.

InterSystems IRIS allows users to build important applications quickly and easily. Harnessing the power of machine learning – and featuring capabilities for data management, interoperability, and analytics – InterSystems IRIS is the right choice for building cloud-first solutions for mission-critical data.

Adaptive Analytics is an optional extension that makes InterSystems IRIS even more powerful by providing a business-oriented, virtual data model layer between InterSystems IRIS and popular Business Intelligence (BI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) client tools. It includes an intuitive user interface for developing a data model in the form of a “virtual cube” where data can be organized, calculated measures consistently defined, and data fields clearly named. By having a centralized common data model, enterprises solve the problem of differing definitions and calculations to provide their end users with one consistent view of business metrics and data characterization.

• Data stays in InterSystems IRIS for best possible performance – no copying or moving it around
• Data stewards use the Adaptive Analytics modeler to make data accessible for business users – no need to expose complex data structures, tables, or relationships
• Changes to the data model are published as virtual cubes without disrupting users – no waiting for lengthy rebuilding of cubes
• Analytics users can employ the BI tool of their choice, e.g. Microsoft Excel and PowerBI, or Tableau, and access the same online analytical processing (OLAP) model
• Adaptive Analytics uses the full breadth of data stored within InterSystems IRIS through live connectivity rather than partial content or stale data extracts
• It provides a single layer to govern data access and protects sensitive data from unauthorized access

From the queries run against the data model, Adaptive Analytics builds acceleration structures that are used to satisfy frequently issued requests more efficiently. These pre-aggregated data structures are created automatically based on query patterns, and these aggregates get faster over time as further data requests are made. In contrast to simple caching, aggregates are generated to include additional data fields that may be needed to satisfy queries run in the future.

• Universal semantic layer makes complex backend data structures more accessible to non-technical users
• Avoids the issue of differing query dialects to provide consistent answers to the same question across the organization, no matter which BI or AI tool is used
• Enables self-service BI so that business users can carry out interactive and multidimensional analysis themselves without waiting on IT staff
• Learns from query patterns and builds aggregations using machine learning to get smarter and faster
• Unprecedented scaling and performance via the power of InterSystems IRIS

Typically, there are three types of users who will benefit from Adaptive Analytics:

1. DBA/data engineers – Adaptive Analytics frees them to spend time handling complex issues and finding new data assets to make available via additional data pipelines, instead of being consumed with manually curating and creating aggregates to make things run faster
2. Data stewards/modelers – Adaptive Analytics provides them with an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface to create the data model and streamline field names, generating the building blocks for end users to build upon
3. Business users – Adaptive Analytics gives them easy and consistent access to well-defined data using their tools of choice

Adaptive Analytics is an optional extension to InterSystems IRIS and IRIS for Health Advanced Server, available with InterSystems IRIS and IRIS for Health versions 2021.1.