Platform Technical Brief GoodData

8/13/2019 Platform Technical Brief GoodData

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Business

Intelligencein the Cloud:A GoodDataPlatformOverview

The GoodData Platform is a portfolio of tools, APIs,and best practices. Designed to deliver information-as-a-service to business users, the GoodDataPlatform enables IT to take a leadership role inenterprise BI.


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2Platform Overview

The GoodData

Platform:An Overview

GoodData enables IT to deliver high-valueBusiness Intelligence (BI) services to the businessand create true competitive differentiation in

the marketplace. In this paper, the basic featuresand functionality of the GoodData Platformare introduced.

With pre-built analytics that measure the mostsignicant metrics about customer interactionsincluding trending, waterfall, conversion, cohortand segmentation analysesthe GoodData

Platform drives IT productivity and effectiveness.and explained.

GoodData allowsus to track globalKPIs for our consult-

ing business in oneplacetrend themover time, andcompare regionalperformance.GoodData is mysource of truth.

Ivo Totev

Chief Services OfcerSoftware AG


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3Platform Overview

The GoodData

Platform: Open forBusiness

As an end-to-end BI platform that lives in thecloud, the GoodData Platform frees up IT to focuson the strategic use of all data including sales,

marketing, social, and customer service data, andless on the underlying mechanics required to keepthe BI application functional. The GoodDataPlatform supports IT in three ways:

The GoodDataPlatform, with itssecurity mechanisms,backup guarantees,and data privacysafeguards, is afundamental buildingblock of any ITgovernance plan.

Nurtures a customer obsessed

culture

Optimized for customer and partner

interactions, the GoodData Platform

gives you information-as-a-service thatempowers you to approach, sell, and

support your customers more effectively.

This includes social, sales, traditional

marketing support data, and human

resource (HR) and nance data

anything data. Any data source.

Delivers speed to value

The GoodData Platform helps com-

panies accelerate business results

with on-demand analytics that enablespeedy decision-making. Get up and

running in just days with a platform

designed for the world of software-as-

a-service (SaaS) applications and social

media, where data changes constantly

and analytics require maximum agility

and speed. It gives business users

real-time access and ad hoc reporting

on internal and external data. And

GoodData is proven to deliver 99.5

percent uptime and 84.5 percent

user adoption. Translation: Deploy

GoodData, and it will be always

onand always used.

Enables velocity of innovation

The GoodData Platform helps you

build a culture of innovation with

its ability to mobilize your company

around innovative processes, products

and services. The open architecture

of the GoodData Platform makes it

easy to embed GoodData into existing

applications or create new applica-

tions for your users. Address newrequirements by adding data sources,

transformations, data models, metrics

and users. Create data mashups that

correlate metrics across multiple data

sources and answer questions fast in

response to dynamic market condi-

tions. And as new data sources are

created, effortlessly integrate them

into your BI workow.


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4Platform Overview

Benets of the

GoodData PlatformGoodData has helpedmore than 90,000users make sense oftheir customer-facingdata with advanced

business analytics.

Its open

Thanks to its open APIs, the GoodData

Platform makes it easy to integrate

new data sources, change data trans-

formations, modify the logical data

model, and update metrics, reports

and dashboards. All changes are

instantly pushed out to users, whocan use representational state transfer

(REST) APIs to automate and integrate

provisioning and analytical tasks. Users

can also create new applications and

mash-ups on the y based on their

business needs.

Its complete

As an end-to-end solution, the Good-

Data Platform eliminates the need to

buy and integrate different productsfor data loading (ETL), data warehous-

ing, analytical engine, data visualiza-

tion, and collaboration. The GoodData

Platform does it all.

It scales

The GoodData Platform is a multi-

tenant platform that runs all operations

as stateless services distributed across

hundreds of computers. Because

of this, the GoodData Platform can

scale to meet the demands of any

business. Currently supporting more

than a million data integrations per

week, the GoodData computing fabric

tracks and balances all loads, andthe GoodData Platform services are

partitioned to allow each service to be

used independently. With a choice of

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and

RackSpace/OpenStack offering

a choice of public or private cloud as

storage for their data and transactions,

businesses have the ability to quickly

deploy additional hardware to handle

additional trafc or data volumes.

Its fast

As GoodData users push the limits of

the service, GoodData continues to

optimize the platform to benet all

customers. Additionally, analytical

query language abstraction enables

the use of the database engine for

optimal performance.


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5Platform Overview

GoodData has helped more than 90,000 usersmake sense of their customer-facing data withadvanced business analytics.

With GoodData wedo not have to jumpthrough hoops, whichmeans the value ofGoodData has beenhuge. The reality is,

it gives us speed andshortens the time ofdevelopment.

Mark BoyerSenior EngineerTime Warner Cable

Its reliable

The GoodData Platform offers

unmatched availability. Because the

GoodData Platform runs the analytical

platform as hundreds of granular ana-

lytical services in multiple datacenters

and providers across the globe, the

GoodData Platform remains up and

running even in case of data-center

level performance degradations and

outages. GoodData guarantees 99.5

percent uptime SLA which translates to

only a little more than three hours of

downtime per month. And, to promote

complete transparency, GoodData

publishes our SLA history.

Its secure

Your data is safe with GoodData. The

GoodData Platform guarantees security

in all key areas, and ensures that all

data is backed up for governance and

disaster recovery planning purposes.

Physical security and data security

are assured across all communication

protocols, applications, services,

components, devices, and underlying

hardware. All data is stored in highly

secure Amazon EC2 and RackSpace

data centers certied for the Health

Insurance Portability and Accountability

Act (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry

(PCI) Security Standards, and Interna-

tional Standardization Organization

(ISO) compliance. Security zones are

dened with specic enforcements,

such as protocol enforcement, intru-

sion detection, and monitoring, and

the complete GoodData Platform is

regularly tested for penetration, Cus-

tomer data is isolated and encrypted

in transport as well as at rest to further

enhance security. Security Assertion

Markup Language (SAML) 2.0, Okta,

and custom solutions are available for

single sign on (SSO), and Symantec

and TRUSTe certicates are used for

authentication. Finally, process secu-

rity is ensured by GoodDatas internal

processes, and personnel are certied

with Statement on Standards for Attes-

tation Engagements No. 16 (SSAE 16)

Type II and OWasp certications and

regularly audited.

Its agile

By providing an analytics platform as

a service, GoodData enables unprec-

edented levels of innovation and

backward compatibility. GoodData

pushes out platform enhancements

at least twice each week, and major

releases at least monthly. GoodData

also engages in accelerated feedback

cycle with customers, and guarantees

100-percent backward compatibility of

every release.

Its customizable

The visualization and collaboration

user interface is easily white-labeled

to reect the brand identity of

any company.


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6Platform Overview

GoodData gives us anopportunity to haveour clients aggregate

data from differentsources providing usmore data to analyzeand draw deeperinsights into moreparts of their business[W]e can do inminutes what before

wed have to do inprogramming thatwould take months.

Robert HoneycuttCEOMarket Metrix

Its easy to manage

Every management and administrative

function is available via API. All these

functions can be fully integrated with

third-party administrative/maintenancesolutions as well as other third-party

applications. And because the

GoodData Platform is partitioned into

domains, its projects and user spaces

never conict. The GoodData Platform

also enables dynamic provisioning

of new users, projects, and permis-

sions. The fact that its fully automated

means that creating new data marts

and data warehouses can be done

in seconds. Finally, the GoodDataPlatforms mass-management capa-

bilities mean projects can be derived

from templates, and analytical objects

like dashboards, reports, and metrics

can be transferred between multiple

projects and upgraded or updatedwith one command.

Its built on leading technologies

Designed for the cloud from Day 1,

the GoodData Platform is built on

leading-edge technologies to ensure

dependable performance, integration,

and efciency. Technologies such as

Vertica, MongoDB, Cassandra, NetApp,

and Rackspace are all integrated into

the GoodData Platform.


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7Platform Overview

TheGoodDataPlatform

ArchitectureThe GoodData Platform encompasses all the keycomponents of a BI solution: load, store, analyze,visualize, and share. All were built from the groundup to exist in the cloud and be delivered as anend-to-end service. However, they also can beused as independent modules and integratedinto BI applications an organization has alreadyimplemented.

DATAWA

REHO

USE

Scalab

ility

Relia

bility

Security

EXTRACT,TRAN

SFORM

,

LOAD

(ETL)

Connect

Schedule

Monitor C

OLL

ABORATE

USE

RINTERFACE

Self-service

Interactivity

CustomizationANALY

TICALENGINE

Slice&DiceReal-time

BestPractices

GoodData

Platform

LOAD

STOR

EANALYZE

VISUALIZE

SHARE

Winning

Tog

ether

Mobility

Notific

atio

ns


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8Platform Overview

Load: Powerful

Out-of-the-BoxETL Capability

Data Sources the GoodData Platform HasConnected To:

In this rst stage, the GoodData Plat-

form provides for built-in connectors

to extract data from any data source

both on-premise databases, and

cloud applications and databases

structured and unstructured data

alike. All this is available through the

GoodData Data Integration Service,

a key differentiating technology from

GoodData that enables visual devel-

opment of logical data models, and

provides extract, transform, and load

(ETL) functionality.

The GoodData Data Integration

Service connects to any application,

application program interface (API),

database, or le system, and recog-

nizes many different data formats (see

sidebar). For example, the GoodData

Platform can connect to a variety of

sources, thanks to its generic readers

such as REST, simple object access

protocol (SOAP), comma separated

value (CSV), and Java database con-

nectivity (JDBC). For organizations with

data stored in big data applications,

the GoodData Platform works with

Hadoop, Hive, Cassandra, and HBase.

Salesforce (all clouds)

Salesforce Chatter

Zendesk

Twitter

Facebook

SAP

Google AnalyticsYouTube

Google AdSense

Google Docs

ExactTarget

Marketo

Eloqua

Netsuite

Jira

GitHub

Yammer

Pinterest

Box.net

MediaMind

Scup

Zuora

Pivotal TrackerMindBody

Harvest

BrightIdea

Coupa

GetSatisfaction

Pardot

Sugar CRM

Microsoft Dynamics

Oracle

Twilio

Genius

GreatVines

Aurix

Flurry

AppFigures

Campaign MonitorAmazon AWS

Chargify

QuickBooks

Keynote

Magento

New Relic

SendGrid

and more


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9Platform Overview

The GoodData Data Integration Ser-

vice uses CloverETL, an open source

data integration tool based upon Java,

to create a exible data transformation

platform. This platform consists of twoseparate environments: a data trans-

formation development environment

with an attractive visual interface, and

a remote execution environment. The

GoodData Data Integration Service

performs more than two dozen

prebuilt transformations on data,

including deduplicate, denormalize,

aggregate, and others. Users can also

write their own customized transforma-tions using the GoodData Integration

Service. Once the data is transformed,

it is loaded into a GoodData project,

again using a visual tool, and connected

in a logical ow.

The logical data model piece of the

GoodData Data Integration Service

allows the business to dene the

entities as well as the relationships

for example, combining data from

Facebook campaigns with CRM data

from Salesforce. All data models can

be edited on the y using the Good-Data Data Integration Service tool.

This completely eliminates the need

to do low-level coding, and because

the GoodData Platform has pre-built

connectors. It also eliminates the

need to perform integrations using

third-party tools--however, customers

have the exibility to use their ETL

tool of choice. Visual and easy-to-use,

this allows even non-technical users to

design complex ows, and advanced

transformations are performed right

out of the box.

For scheduling loads, the GoodData

Platform possesses a data-loading

service console that lets users choose

the frequency for scheduling loads. If

you choose to create a template-load-


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11Platform Overview

Store: Flexible,

Scalable, and SecureCloud Database

For the storage aspect of the BI service, theGoodData Platform using the HP Vertica Data-base, a powerful, reliable, scalable, and secure

data storage application in which data from allconnected data sources is stored.

GoodDatasInnovation Velocity

GoodData separatesthe logical data mod-el from the physicalmodel. This meansGoodData can con-tinuously implementnew innovationsandinfrastructurethatincrease performanceand lower costs, allwithout disruption ofthe user experience.

Vertica uses advanced technologies

like columnar storage, projections

(instead of indexes), optimized I/O,

and other features that help achieve

top query performance. Businesses will

get one of two possible deployment

scenarios of Vertica: either as a multi-

tenant deployment on Amazon EC2,

or on a private cloud using Rackspace

cloud services. In either case, busi-

nesses are provided with the highest

security. With a Rackspace private

cloud deployment, businesses get

their own private space with customer

data stored on dedicated hardware.

Data is encrypted using SafeNet, a

leading global provider of data protec-

tion. This important component helps

GoodData implement the end-to-end

data encryptiondata encryptions

at restof the shared le systems on

NetApp storage.

In the rst stage (Load), the data

model is an abstractiona logical data

model. During Store, the GoodData

Platform automatically translates this

logical data model to a physical one,

optimizing the data as necessary by

creating indexing, splitting tables,

and otherwise storing it as efciently

as possible to achieve highest report

rendering performance.

In addition, the Store component of

the GoodData platform allows users to

take data snapshots of historical data

at specic points in time to analyze

and compare trends or examine past

performance. Users get real-time

access to their data, can easily provi-

sion large numbers of new users, and

can be condent that their data is

completely secure.


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12Platform Overview

Analyze: A Robust,

Extensible AnalyticsEngine

Once the data is securely stored in the cloud inthe HP Vertica database, users get access to theGoodData Extensible Analytics Engine (XAE): a

no-cube technology for exible slice-and-dicefunctionality.

The GoodData XAE uses multi-level

caching for exceptional performance

each multidimensional query is

broken down into multiple small

sub-queries that are executed and

cached for reuse. The pivoted query

result is also cached. Dashboards,

reports and metrics are abstracted

from underlying data model, freeing

up GoodData to implement innova-

tions without disrupting users

operations. The engine is extensible

with additional predictive analytics

and other advanced modules. It also

optimizes the underlying storage

structures for multiple underlying data

query and storage systems, including

both relational and columnar database

congurations, for optimal performance

across use cases. The analytics engine

also pivots and transforms the data for

visualization purposes.

In addition to the GoodData XAE,

the GoodData Platform includes the

GoodData Multidimensional Analytics

Query Language (MAQL). GoodData

MAQL is a powerful, easy-to-use query

language similar to SQL, but optimized

for multidimensional environments.

This expressive language is designed

for reuse, and is simpler to use than

Multidimensional Expressions (MDX),

the query language for OLAP databases

GoodData MAQL includes advanced

expressions such as conditionals,

inner/outer joins for exception

reporting, ranking, transformations,

multidimensional reporting, and time

aggregations such as year to date

(YTD). All this allows users to gain

rapid insight into their data while they

implement out-of-the-box analytical

best practices. Users can further enrich

their knowledge with custom metrics

and advanced slicing and dicing

and predictive analytics.


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13Platform Overview

Visualize: A Delightful

and Intuitive UserInterface

When it comes time to deliver reports, theGoodData Platform offers a rich and intuitiveuser interface for reporting and data visualization.

The interactive dashboards are editable inpixel-perfect, what-you-see-is-what-you-get(WYSIWYG) manner.

Users can create reports easily, yet the

tools are powerful with built-in aggre-

gation, pivoting, ltering and totals.

No scripting or programming is neces-

sary. A high degree of customization is

possible, including logos, photos, richmultimedia content, and interactive

widgetsfor example, Twitter feeds.

The dashboards are interactivethey

can be ltered and users can drill

down within the same reports or drill

across to new reports.

For full cross-platform compatibility,

the GoodData visualization tools are

built using HTML5 and pure JavaScript

ember.js framework. No Flash or other

insecure technologies are utilized.

All this allows users to achieve quick

insights without a tedious discovery

process. They can customize interac-

tive dashboards without advanced IT

know-howthis frees up IT to focus on

higher-level, strategic issues.


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14Platform Overview

Share: Immediate

and ProductiveCollaborationThe GoodData Platform also has

advanced collaboration capabilities

that allow users to share insights with

colleagues at any time, no matter

where they are located. They cancollaborate on dashboards and reports

in real time, and even trigger noti-

cations to colleagues of important

eventssay when a KPI reaches a

particular threshold in the data.

These Collaboration capabilities sup-

port cross-departmental and virtual

teams, enabling pixel-perfect PNG/

PDF export of reports and complete

dashboards. Any changes to reports ordashboards are instantly propagated

to all users.

Mobility is also a key feature of the

GoodData Platform. Users can access

reports and dashboards on any mobile

device or schedule them via e-mail.

The GoodData Platform also enables

the full embedding and white-labeling

of dashboards using SAML and Okta

support for easy integration.

The GoodData Platform also enablesexporting of raw data as well as

reports and dashboards. It supports

CSV and Excel for raw data, and PNG

and PDF for rendered tables and

charts. Because it is pixel perfect,

exported reports and even complete

dashboards look exactly the same in

an exported PNG/PDF as they do on

screen, and reports can be pushed

directly to social streams such as

Chatter and Yammer.

All reports are also enabled with a

commenting feature that allows

users to have real-time conversations

within the report. Finally, users can

schedule the timing of the reports,

and get results over email.


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17Platform Overview

Ways To Usethe GoodDataPlatform

Your Apps

An Enterprise subscribes to GoodData and builds its own custom analytics

leveraging the open architecture of the cloud-based, multi-tenant GoodData

Platform.

GoodData Apps

An enterprise subscribes to one or more GoodData Apps, such as GoodData

Sales Analytics App or GoodData Marketing Demand Analytics App, and uses

them in conjunction with the GoodData Platform to create analytics and reports

based on industry best practices.

Powered By GoodData

Solution providers can partner with GoodData in two ways: First, they can

embed the GoodData Platform in their own analytic offerings, which are white

labeled and marketed as powered by GoodData. Or they can build their

own applications on the GoodData Platform and bring them to market.

Its been humbling

to see our customersslice and dice dataand build customreports and dash-boards so quickly.

Mikkel SvaneCEOZendesk


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Conclusion

The GoodData Platform gives businesses theopportunity to achieve what until now has beenelusive: to understand how business activities leadto cash. It enables them to nurture leads throughsocial media marketing campaigns, sell throughtheir CRM systems, and close the deal in the bill-ing system. At the end of the day, businesses can

understand the holistic path customers took andcalculate ROI on specic campaigns, identify howcampaigns are different, how many leads a partic-ular campaign contributed, and other key metrics.GoodData helps businesses achieve these goalsby offering enterprise IT the only complete, open,and agile BI solution delivered as a service avail-able today.

Get started started todaywith a 30-day Free Trial

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Platform Technical Brief GoodData