SAN CARLOS, Calif. — October 19, 2011 — When there’s a hurricane, severe weather, or an emergency, having as much information as possible is crucial in making a decision that could mean life or death. MarkLogic Corporation, the company empowering organizations to make high stakes decisions on Big Data in real time, today announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has selected MarkLogic to power its Emergency Operations Network (EON). EON is the program used by the FAA to monitor and track severe weather and emergencies, with a dashboard that is updated in real-time for crisis management.
“When you’re looking at Big Data, you have to remember it’s about more than how many petabytes you have. It’s also about the variety and velocity of that data, which is the main challenge the FAA had with EON,” said Randall Jackson, vice president, MarkLogic Public Sector. “The organization required a technology solution that was capable of taking multiple document types and feeds and making sense of the information. This data has multiple file types and is coming in at a very rapid rate over a short period of time, so the most important part of the solution is making the data available as quickly as possible. MarkLogic was able to meet this criterion in a single product, offering full text and faceted search, a schema-agnostic structure, and a geospatial display through Google Maps – which can be extremely difficult with traditional technologies.”
The EON program plays an integral part in tracking natural and man-made disasters and in coordinating the response to emergency situations. As a database for unstructured information, MarkLogic is unique in its ability to address big data problems associated with the volume, velocity, and variety of today’s information.
“The public sector is facing very difficult and complex data challenges given the way we share information today,” said Ken Bado, CEO, MarkLogic. “Unstructured information – tweets, weather reports, news stories, emails, documents, PDFs, and more – makes up the base of data that we pull together that helps everyone get a grasp on a situation. A decision can either save lives, or make things worse, that’s why you need to trust the information you’re getting and know which 10 percent is the 10 percent you need to be paying attention to. A single decision can be the tipping point for a successful mission and can have a direct impact on people’s lives. Technology like MarkLogic enables the public sector to make real-time decisions with Big Data, ultimately supporting the mission, not getting in the way of it.”
The FAA’s mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.