Data-mining service targets e-business sites

SEATTLE — DigiMine has launched hosted data mining and warehousing services for companies lacking the tools, resources or time to build their own systems for tracking Web site activity.

The company claims its DigiMine Services can be used to build a data warehouse for a customer in days, rather than the weeks or months it would take a customer do the same on its own.

DigiMine is focusing on midsize to large corporations that require reports on their Web site or e-commerce activity.

The process of setting up a data warehouse for a customer begins with the company sending DigiMine data it wants warehoused, or DigiMine can collect data from the customer over a secure Internet connection.

DigiMine then aggregates the data into blocks via data-mining algorithms and lets clients access data reports through a Web browser. Authentication and Secure Sockets Layer encryption provide security.

The data warehouse is kept up-to-date through a tool known as a Data Slurper, which is installed on a company’s data repositories. The Slurper, which works with any OLE-DB-compliant database, captures data, encrypts and compresses it, and sends it to DigiMine’s data center.

Bassel Ojjeh, DigiMine’s chief operating officer, claims the Slurper doesn’t have a significant impact on WAN traffic and can be scheduled to send data back at varying intervals.

The application service provider to date has tested the service mainly with customers using fractional T-1 lines, he says.

Once a customer’s data has been warehoused, the customer’s end users can access a number of reports including customer behavior, site performance, product consumption, browse-to-buy conversion and marketing campaign effectiveness.

DigiMine offers its services off of Intel servers housed in an Exodus data center.

The company’s services start at $5,000 per month.

By: Michael Martin

Source: Network World / PDF

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