Analytics software provider Kontagent today became the first company to deploy the Hive open source data warehouse system in the cloud, leveraging the Hadoop project’s big data analysis capabilities to help social and mobile application developers explore user behavior. Hive is powering kSuite DataMine, a just-released data mining tool for Kontagent’s kSuite social/mobile app analytics platform.
The new DataMine solution is 100% hosted with all data loading and other setup requirements handled by Kontagent, enabling big data exploration unavailable in any other SaaS analytics solution. Both the cloud deployment and the end-to-end solution are milestones in the use of Hive, dramatically reducing the costs of data mining by eliminating the need to build or license proprietary software, buy the servers, load the data, and maintain the database.
“Our core product is an online dashboard that answers hundreds of common questions about user behavior in social games and mobile apps, but we wanted to empower data analysts to dive deeper by creating ad hoc queries. The challenge is that the kSuite platform captures as many as 50 billion events for our customers each month. We needed to provide a more flexible big data exploration solution for analysts and business intelligence professionals to dive into the raw data,” said Jeff Tseng, Kontagent Co-Founder and CEO. “Hive gave us the means to address that challenge, and we took it to the next level with an affordable out-of-the-box cloud strategy.”
With a basic knowledge of SQL, business intelligence professionals at social/mobile app development businesses can use the company’s new Hive-based tool to gain in-depth insights into how users interact with their apps. Questions might range from “What last three actions did users take before they uninstalled the app or failed to return?” to “What last five behaviors did users exhibit before purchasing virtual goods?”
The answers – unavailable without data mining – can be used to fine-tune application design, identify high-value cohorts, shape marketing plans and guide other decisions to generate maximum value from each app.
