Too much data? Altair can crunch it in the cloud for AI, IoT and other big data use cases.
We’re certainly at the start of the era of big data, and even now the amount of information available is staggering. Simulation engineers need to run use cases and studies fast—and with a high degree of accuracy. Programmers and data analysts need to be able to inspect large sets of data points and pull out relevant information. Sometimes digging down a data rabbit hole can make it seem as though the only solution is more datasets. Data analytics has never been more important to engineers.
Altair recently announced the Altair Unlimited Data Analytics Appliance, a prebuilt system that customers can use as an infrastructure as a service. The simulation company is putting a standardized face on the software-as-a-service (SAS) arm of its cloud offerings with this new appliance, which runs on Dell PowerEdge R750 servers on the Altair side so that customers can use as much high performance computing (HPC) power as required.
Altair Unlimited was born in 2021 as a way for customers to access the Altair HPC infrastructure. This data analytics arm of the company’s Unlimited brand follows the similar packaging models of Altair Unlimited Simulation that was released earlier this year. The idea remains the same—that eventually all customers will move to HPC. Adding high performance resources provides engineers with the ability to access the next level of simulation or data analysis. But this jump requires licensing, computing power and IT work. Using the resources already built into the Altair ecosystem lets a company reach the next level of computing faster and more easily. In return, users pay for the time and data used for each project.
There are several advantages of using a cloud service like this, and the Altair Units licensing system helps to make a transition even easier. Altair has several offerings in the realm of SAS data analytics, and this new portal should give its customers easier access to all of them.
What SAS Resources Are Covered Here?
The Altair SLC tool is built to run SAS language programs without requiring formatting or modifications. Several data sources can be pulled into the tool, including “cloud services, Hadoop, data warehouses, databases, SAS language, SPSS, Microsoft Excel, CSV and other file-based data formats.” This is a huge benefit for companies that are used to spending time translating before running SAS analysis or paying third-party tools to translate. Now that effort is moved to Altair, so engineers and data analysts can focus on the analysis.
The Altair Analytics Workbench acts as the interface for different data centers within an organization. The environment is built for SAS and lets users integrate Python, R and SQL code. Less experienced users can use a more visual drag-and-drop function to build analysis without coding. The big advantage of the workbench is the idea that all of an organization’s data can be accessible to all of its units, as well as the ability for people with several different coding skill levels to work in the same environment.
If the workbench is for running the studies, then the Altair SmartWorks Hub is designed to manage them. The hub lets data managers decide who can access the data studies and adds a layer of security to the system. Users can schedule studies and set rules to determine when to keep a dataset’s results or when to run additional studies. This is also set up for a variety of user skill levels, with graphic interfaces for controls and some code-heavy options.
SmartWorks Analytics brings all the data sources together—big data, user-run analysis studies, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI). The addition of AI makes this a powerful part of this family of tools. It also exists as a more stand-alone part of the Data Analytics Appliance. The SmartWorks Analytics branch is also the most outward facing part of the appliance, already linked with other companies and tools like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
What Does It All Mean?
The advantages of the Altair Unlimited Data Analytics Appliance are the same standard advantages of any cloud portal. The cloud gives users faster results by pushing the infrastructure and computing resources to the service provider. This means that the time line from deciding to use data analysis to using the analysis is shorter and the work can start earlier. Engineers and data analysts can spend more of their workdays performing analysis and less time working through IT concerns. Customers can pay as they use the system and scaling up for a big job is much faster and easier. Following in the footsteps of previous announcements of the Unlimited brand, Altair also gives users the option to have a dedicated physical server on premises.
Security is always a concern with cloud applications, as customer data is beamed into the cloud and every transmission carries some small risk of theft or corruption. Altair has several levels of security to mitigate the risks associated with data transfer. Keeping the data on Altair’s servers should also minimize risk by lowering the number of times that data is transmitted. The SmartWorks Hub is also set up to protect data from unauthorized users.
Altair Units work hand-in-hand with the pay-by-use aspect of cloud computing. Altair has a long history of selling its software based on the time spent using it instead of the software itself. The unit system also helps customers understand how a specific software or tool can help them to solve a problem or allow them to test-drive other tools before committing to a larger purchase.
Data analysis, especially SAS analytics, comes with a learning curve and Altair has a full set of resources in place to help new customers ease into the data pond. Altair also offers consulting services for companies that don’t have engineers or analysts ready to run SAS studies.
If a customer’s goal is to make better data decisions faster, then every effort should be made to get better tools in the hands of the customer’s engineers and data analysts. There’s a cost-benefit analysis that needs to occur before making the jump, but the shift to simulation and data analysis is moving toward having HPC as a requirement for companies to compete. Portals like this require a company to commit to specific software vendors because placing all your data and effort into one basket is a long-term decision.
We are still at the beginning stages of understanding what exactly big data can do for society and how artificial intelligence can help in these endeavors. Repackaging services like this data analytics appliance helps to provide small incremental benefits to engineering work that will hopefully pay off in large ways for companies, with the eventual large payoffs benefitting society. Altair’s size has the advantage of offering huge catalogs of software and tools to its customers, but there are growing pains as well. Pulling several products together under a new banner not only showcases how each tool has its niche but also highlights how large portions of the tools are the same.
