Kx Systems: Revolutionizing Utilities with Better Data Analytics
Janet Lustgarten, CEO & Co- founderTo maximize the value of these growing volumes of new data types for predictive modeling and real-time outage correc- tions, the power industry is increasingly turning to technolo- gies—such as Kx Systems’ kdb+—that are proven in high-speed computing and data-intensive industries, and finding they can outperform their existing solutions. Kx Systems, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based software company is successfully helping utilities make this transition with its data- base, kdb+.
The technology has been widely adopted by Wall Street for the past two decades, where it is used for analyzing enormous volumes of data in real-time. “Utilities want to get greater benefits from the data they col- lect,” said Janet Lustgarten, CEO of Kx Systems.
“We are find- ing that they are looking to other industries for proven solutions to replace their legacy software.” Among Kx’s customers are the Independent Electricity Sys- tem Operator of Ontario, and Total Gas and Power UK, as well as nine of the top global banks including Goldman Sachs, JP- Morgan and Morgan Stanley. In discussions with utilities, Kx finds they are looking for better tools for smart meter analytics, to enable them to quickly analyze use patterns; discover outages and fraud and more care- fully manage their electricity load.
When, for example, changing conditions cause energy variables such as voltage and temperature captured by smart devices to double or triple data output, kdb+ could adapt, applying cor- rections and updates on the fly while the system remains online. Because of the database’s extended temporal data types, these time-series events can be manipulated with ease.
Kx is part of the Internet of Things revolution because kdb+ can capture and store data from a wide ecosystem of devices
“Smart meter data is mutable with the potential for cor- rections and updates far into the future. Kdb+ can apply these changes seamlessly while keeping the system online 24/7. And, thanks to the product’s scalability, sudden spikes in volume caused by the variability in smart meter data capture are easily absorbed,” said Fintan Quill, Kx Systems’ Global Head of Pre- Sales Engineering. Kx’s utility customers find that kdb+ applications require many fewer programmers to build and maintain. Kdb+ is a time-series database with a tightly coupled array programming language, and this combination leads to very fast development times. Kdb+ is well known for its high-performance and stabil- ity, as well as its ease of maintenance.
“Another significant benefit of Kx software is that because it is so performance-focused its utility customers are shocked to find that instead of needing dozens of servers for major applica- tions with billions of rows of data, one server will suffice with kdb+,” said Lustgarten. Kx is part of the Internet of Things revolution because kdb+ can capture and store data from a wide ecosystem of devices and it can quickly provide sophisticated time-series analytics on trillions of records. “Time-series analytics is now more relevant than ever, and bringing together in-memory database analytics with vast stores of on-disk historical data, in the way our software can, is trans- forming how business is done,” said Lustgarten.
Company
Kx Systems
Headquarters
Palo Alto, CA
Management
Janet Lustgarten, CEO & Co- founder
and Abby Gruen, Chief Marketing Officer
Description
Provides a high-performance database system for
extremely fast analysis of large scale volumes of
streaming real-time and historical data.
