In an industry first, Oracle makes lakehouse performance identical to database query performance

New 500TB TPC-H* benchmarks demonstrate 17X faster query performance vs. Snowflake; 36X faster than Google BigQuery; and 17X faster than Databricks

Oracle today announced the general availability of MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse, delivering an industry first by enabling customers to query data in object storage as fast as querying data inside the database. MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse supports a variety of object store file formats such as CSV, Parquet, and export files from other databases, and can combine object storage file data and MySQL database transactional data together in the same query. Object store files are queried directly by HeatWave without copying the data into the MySQL database. As a result, MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse sets new standards for scalability and performance for query processing, speed of loading data, cluster provisioning time, and automation to query data in object storage.

"More than 80 percent of data is stored in file systems and that number is growing. Customers want to integrate and analyze this varied external data with their internal transactional data, but it's often too complex or too expensive to process," said Edward Screven, chief corporate architect, Oracle. "MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse makes it easy for customers to get valuable real-time insights by combining their data in object storage with database data while gaining significantly higher query performance and much faster data loading at a lower cost."

Querying data in object storage is as fast as querying data inside the database

As demonstrated by a 10 TB TPC-H* benchmark, querying data in object storage in popular file formats with MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse is as fast as querying data in the MySQL database. This is made possible by MySQL Autopilot, a built-in capability of MySQL HeatWave that provides machine learning-powered automation, which learns from the execution of queries and improves the execution plan of future queries. MySQL Autopilot is an innovation in MySQL HeatWave that is not available anywhere else. MySQL HeatWave on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is powered by AMD EPYC™ processors.

"The AMD and MySQL HeatWave engineering teams are closely collaborating to optimize MySQL HeatWave for AMD EPYC processors to take advantage of new processor capabilities," said Forrest Norrod, executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center Solutions Business Group, AMD. "Thanks to this collaboration, MySQL customers running MySQL HeatWave on AMD EPYC CPU-powered OCI instances benefit from an outstanding price performance advantage for their business-critical workloads, including real-time analytics on massive amounts of data stored in object storage."

Best performance for lakehouse use cases

As demonstrated by a 500 TB TPC-H* benchmark, the query performance of MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse is:

• 9X faster than Amazon Redshift
• 17X faster than Snowflake
• 17X faster than Databricks
• 36X faster than Google BigQuery

The performance to load data from the object store with MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse is:

• 9X faster than Amazon Redshift
• 2X faster than Snowflake
• 6X faster than Databricks
• 8X faster than Google BigQuery

MySQL HeatWave's unrivaled performance is a result of its scale-out architecture that enables massive parallelism to provision the cluster, load data, and process queries with up to 512 nodes. In addition, enhancements to MySQL Autopilot automate metadata creation for object files and dynamically adapt to the performance of the underlying object store to provide the best performance in any OCI region.

MySQL HeatWave is the only cloud service that provides transaction processing, real-time analytics, machine learning, data lake querying, and machine learning-based automation within a single MySQL database service. A core part of Oracle's distributed cloud strategy, MySQL HeatWave is available in OCI, natively on Amazon Web Services, as part of the Oracle Database Service for Azure, and in customers' data centers with OCI Dedicated Region.

Read what customers, partners, and analysts are saying about MySQL HeatWave Lakehouse

"Data is growing exponentially and so is the amount of data we store in our data lake. The ability to use standard MySQL syntax to query data across our database and object storage to get real-time insights is very important for Natura," said Fabricio Rucci, solution architect, Natura&Co. "This opens up new opportunities to explore and could represent new competitive advantages if we can analyze all this data faster than our competition." 

"HeatWave Lakehouse scales out very well for loading data from object storage and for running queries on object store," said Henry Tullis, leader, Cloud Infrastructure and Engineering, Deloitte Consulting. "The load time and the query times are nearly constant as the size of the data grows and the HeatWave cluster size grows correspondingly. This scale out characteristic of HeatWave Lakehouse for data management is key to efficiently processing very large amounts of data."

"It has been a given since Big Data has been around, that Big Data / Lakehouse queries are substantially slower than transactional queries," said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst, Constellation Research. "MySQL HeatWave ends that once and forever, demonstrating that Lakehouse performance can be identical to transaction query performance—unheard of and even unthinkable. With query performance parity, HeatWave allows CxOs to stop worrying where to put data and how to query it. The 'secret sauce' is HeatWave's Autopilot that optimizes the queries. Once again, the HeatWave team has delivered an industry first.

Ipsos acquires Omedia from Médiamétrie

Expansion in the French speaking African countries

Ipsos is pleased to announce the acquisition of Omedia, a multi-specialist market research company established in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Mali.

Omedia is a leading agency in Western Sub-Saharan Africa and performs a large span of marketing research surveys, as well as audience measurement, advertising, editorial and digital monitoring. Its client's portfolio includes international companies (including large French organizations), institutions, and local clients. Omedia was previously owned by Mediametrie, the leading French media audience measurement company.

By investing in Omedia, Ipsos will develop its business, in French speaking African markets, with its existing clients and will leverage robust operational capabilities in the region.

Ben Page, Ipsos CEO, said “The acquisition of Omedia is a great opportunity to offer more services to our clients, in countries where we had limited capacities so far. We are happy to welcome more great professionals which will help our development in Africa”.

Yannick Carriou, Chairman and CEO of Médiamétrie said “I am delighted that Omedia is joining the Ipsos Group. The team will discover how dynamic and innovative Ipsos is. As Omedia will continue to be Mediametrie's partner of choice in the region, all our clients will benefit from even stronger capabilities”.

On July 10, 2023, the European Commission announced the official adoption of its adequacy decision for the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-US DPF). Following the announcement, Noël Luke, Chief Assurance Officer of TrustArc shared, "TrustArc welcomes the European Commission's decision to grant the US adequacy and restore the free flow of data across the Atlantic. This is an important step toward empowering organizations to conduct business activities between the EU and United States while respecting human rights to data privacy and maintaining high standards for data privacy compliance."

As the White House shared, transatlantic data flows are critical to enabling the $7.1 trillion EU-U.S. economic relationship. With the EU-US Data Privacy Framework in effect, businesses will have the ability to transfer personal data from the EU to the U.S. in compliance with GDPR and EU law. TrustArc supports businesses in their pursuit of adhering to the Framework through the TRUSTe EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Verification.

Similar to its predecessor, Privacy Shield, the new TRUSTe EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework Verification will rely on TrustArc's combination of technology, deep privacy expertise as an Accountability Agent, and dispute resolution services. This unique approach to verification saves time and resources for businesses looking to comply with EU-US DPF and will come with the added benefit of ongoing accountability oversight and a seal to demonstrate compliance publicly to consumers.

For over two decades, TrustArc has been the leading provider of privacy assurance solutions including validations, verifications, and certifications. TrustArc was also the most used verification agent for the previous version of the DPF, Privacy Shield. Thousands of businesses use TrustArc to demonstrate compliance with a wide variety of privacy regulations and standards including APEC CBPR, GDPR, and FIPPs.

Microsoft Azure customers worldwide now gain access to QuickNode to take advantage of the scalability, reliability, and agility of Azure to drive application development and shape business strategies.

QuickNode, an end-to-end development platform for Web3 innovation, today announced the availability of its cutting-edge blockchain accessibility infrastructure in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure. QuickNode customers can now take advantage of the productive and trusted Azure cloud platform, with streamlined deployment and management.

"Microsoft Azure has long been the gold standard for developer trust, productivity, and innovative solutions. We are excited to bring QuickNode to the Azure Marketplace, allowing developers to easily and safely access next-gen blockchain infrastructure and tooling," said Dmitry Shklovsky, Co-founder and CEO of QuickNode. "Bringing QuickNode to the Azure Marketplace reinforces our commitment to simplifying Web3 development and offering secure, reliable, and performant blockchain solutions to businesses of every size."

QuickNode is committed to supporting enterprises and leading developer teams with reliable and performant solutions for accessing blockchain data backed by Azure's trusted cloud platform. Businesses will now be able to:

• Easily deploy enterprise RPC nodes tailored to their business goals.
• Optimize blockchain data querying for high levels of speed and reliability with certified SOC 2 security.
• Effortlessly track the performance of their nodes anytime, anywhere, with access to usage data and advanced telemetry.
• Access the most comprehensive Web3 developer toolkit, complete with supercharged APIs, a one-click Web3 app store, world-class developer resources, and around-the-clock support.

QuickNode's fully managed node hosting solution is designed to alleviate the burden of blockchain infrastructure OpEx, allowing businesses to focus on innovation and scaling. By introducing QuickNode in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, a new doorway has been opened for developers and enterprises ready to embrace the innovative solutions possible with blockchain. With this platform, the stage is set for a future where decentralized technology is integrated seamlessly into every layer of web systems, fueling the growth and adoption of the next generation of the internet.

World-renowned cybersecurity leader joins the Identity Security Company’s Board

Veza, the identity security company, today announced the appointment of Phil Venables to its Board of Directors. Venables joins Veza’s Board at a pivotal moment for the company as it takes on traditional, legacy identity solutions with a revolutionary architecture and authorization based approach to modernize the identity industry.

“Phil is the most respected cybersecurity leader in the world and we are truly honored to welcome Phil Venables to the Veza Board,” said Tarun Thakur, Chairman, Co-Founder and CEO of Veza. “Since coming out of stealth a year ago, we have experienced significant momentum with customer adoption across Global 2000 organizations such as Blackstone, Expedia, Zoom, and Intuit. Identity needs a bold second act to go beyond tools like IGA and PAM. By leveraging authorization metadata, we are enabling our customers to address key business challenges in identity governance, privilege management and monitoring, cloud access management, and SaaS access security. Phil will be instrumental in guiding our product innovations and roadmap. We are humbled to have Phil join us in building an iconic identity technology company.”

Venables has more than 35 years of experience working in engineering, management, and board level advisory roles, including for The White House. Before joining Google Cloud as Chief Information Security Officer in 2020, Venables was a Partner at Goldman Sachs where he spent two decades in various risk and cybersecurity leadership positions, in particular as their first CISO, a role he held for 17 years. He has been Chief Information Security Officer for other multiple large banking companies like Standard Chartered Bank and Deutsche Bank. He is on the board of directors at HackerOne, Interos, New York University, and he serves in advisory roles for The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and NIST.

“Every enterprise needs a privilege management program, but traditional tools make it hard to see who has access to what data and how they got it,” said Venables. “Veza has cracked the code on authorization with an innovative architecture that enables continuous monitoring and remediation across the entire modern enterprise. I look forward to supporting Tarun, working closely with the Board and the Veza leadership team as the company invests in this significant market opportunity.”

Company unveils API that transforms 20+ natural language file types from raw to LLM-ready and enterprise-grade data connectors, including for Azure Blob, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive, Dropbox, Elasticsearch, and more.

Unstructured today announced the closing of its Seed and Series A funding rounds, raising $25 million. The Series A was led by Madrona with participation from the seed lead, Bain Capital Ventures, and joined by M12 Ventures, Mango Capital, MongoDB Ventures, and Shield Capital. Notable angel investors Harrison Chase of LangChain, Bob van Luijt of Weaviate, and Josh Lefkowitz of Flashpoint also participated. As part of the financing, Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru and Bain Capital Ventures Partner Enrique Salem joined the board of directors.

Unstructured has rapidly emerged as a leader in data transformation, making it easy for enterprises to utilize their natural language data in conjunction with large language models (LLMs), regardless of file type, document layout, or location. Accessing and transforming this data is significant because over 80% of enterprise data resides in documents and other unstructured files. With over 700,000 downloads and integrated into more than 2,400 GitHub repos, Unstructured has established itself as a leading provider of LLM data preprocessing solutions, enabling organizations to leverage their unstructured data at a speed and ease previously unimaginable.

“Organizations generate vast amounts of unstructured data daily, which, when combined with LLMs, can supercharge productivity,” said Brian Raymond, Founder and CEO of Unstructured. “However, this data is often scattered across numerous databases, file formats, and document layouts. By automating the preprocessing of natural language data, Unstructured eliminates the need for laborious manual preprocessing, removing one of the most time-consuming and expensive bottlenecks data scientists encounter in deploying LLM-based solutions across their organizations.”

The company also released a major product update - a single API that further accelerates the ability for users to leverage their natural language data in conjunction with LLMs. Users can now simply point any file containing natural language at Unstructured’s API and receive back data in a format ready for vector databases, LangChain, and LLMs. Additionally, the company has introduced more than 15 production-grade data connectors, making it possible to connect to natural language data wherever it is stored. Enterprises can use these connectors to build a data pipeline that can be continuously updated. Over the past six months, more than $40 billion has been invested in AI startups, and many of these companies are building solutions on top of LLMs. The introduction of Unstructured’s API and data connectors will further accelerate companies’ ability to connect, transform, and stage data for use with LLMs.

“In today’s digital age, the world runs on documents,” said Karan Mehandru from Madrona. “From research reports and memos to quarterly filings and plans of action, documents are the unit of information that organizations depend on. And yet, most of this information is trapped in inaccessible formats, and organizations have long struggled to unlock this data, leading to information silos, inefficient decision-making, and repetitive work. With the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) and now with Unstructured, we believe that enterprises can finally realize the untapped potential of document data. We have been inspired by the early success Unstructured is experiencing with large customers in the commercial and government sectors and the open source adoption of the product. We are thrilled to partner with Brian and his team and help them build Unstructured to be an iconic company in the modern data stack.”

“Unstructured’s rapid growth from an idea to working with more than 100 companies in a year is proof that there’s a real market need to eliminate data silos,” said Enrique Salem, partner at Bain Capital Ventures. “We led the seed round and doubled down on our investment because we believe in Unstructured’s unique approach to LLM data preprocessing, which will help companies leverage their proprietary data and be able to effectively ingest it. Unstructured will become a must-have product for every business.”

Unstructured has developed its technology in partnership with the open-source community and commercial enterprises, as well as select U.S. Government defense and intelligence organizations. The company has been awarded a Phase I and two Phase II Small Business Innovation and Research contracts by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force. Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Unstructured and has served as a key design partner since the company’s infancy. This past winter, Unstructured partnered with SOCOM to help deploy the first use of an LLM on a stand-alone system and in conjunction with mission-relevant data.

To further strengthen its advisory board, the company is pleased to welcome retired General Michael Groen. Mike is the former Director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the Pentagon, where he built and deployed machine learning and analytics solutions across the DoD. Joining Mike on the advisory board are Mike Brown, former Director of the Defense Innovation Unit and the lead for Shield Capital’s investment in Unstructured, and Ryan Lewis, a veteran of In-Q-Tel and AWS National Security.

Unstructured offers three ways to get started: a rich open-source Python library, open-source containers, and a cloud-hosted API.