Weblogs, social media feeds, smart meters, sensors and other devices generate massive volumes of data commonly known as Big Data, which are not readily accessible in enterprise data warehouses and business intelligence applications today. To help customers integrate and maximize the value of Big Data, the business software giant today unveiled the Oracle Big Data Appliance at the Oracle OpenWorld 2011, San Francisco, Calif.

In addition, the company also released Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine, the industry’s first in-memory hardware and software system engineered to run analytics faster than ever. Plus, to enable new analytic applications, it is tailored to provide real-time speed-of-thought visual analysis, said Oracle. In reality, according to Oracle, Oracle Exalytics is the first engineered system featuring in-memory software and hardware and an optimized Business Intelligence platform with advanced visualization.

Likewise, Oracle said that the Oracle Big Data Appliance is engineered to offer customers an end-to-end solution for Big Data. In conjunction with Oracle Exadata Database Machine and the new Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine, it delivers everything customers need to acquire, organize, analyze and maximize the value of Big Data within their enterprise, said the supplier.

According to Oracle, the Big Data Appliance is a new system that includes an open source distribution of Apache Hadoop, Oracle NoSQL Database, Oracle Data Integrator Application Adapter for Hadoop, Oracle Loader for Hadoop, and an open source distribution of R.

Engineered to work together, the Oracle Big Data Appliance is easily integrated with Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Exadata Database Machine, and Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine. In essence, said oracle, it is designed to deliver extreme analytics on all data types, with enterprise-class performance, availability, supportability and security.

In a statement, Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies, said, “With the explosion of data in the past decade, including more machine-generated data and social data, companies are faced with the challenge of acquiring, organizing and analyzing this data to make better business decisions. New technologies, such as Hadoop, offer some relief, but don’t provide a holistic solution for customers’ Big Data needs.”  He added, “With today’s announcement, Oracle becomes the first vendor to offer customers a complete and integrated set of products to address critical Big Data requirements, unlock efficiencies, simplify management and create data insights that maximize business value.”

Similarly, commenting on Exalytics, John Hood, vice president and Chief Information Officer, Key Energy Services, said, “We are very impressed with the advanced analytics and interactivity enabled by Oracle Exalytics.” “We’re able to rapidly slice and dice information all the way from the highest levels to the detailed level. The interactivity of the Oracle Exalytics user interface will drive up the usage of BI, and enable our users to get in and quickly find the information that they need to make impactful changes within their business,” noted Hood.