The release of Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE®) Version 3.5 introduces an important set of new functions. Besides introducing new modules like Ontologies; features such as index rollback, image thumbnailing, and document preview and many essential enhancements including SQL, we have improved built-in support for monitoring the performance and health of your AIE infrastructure.

Version 3.5 offers a new user experience for those responsible for administration of AIE, defining the steps they need to take in order to act upon the areas in need of prompt action and quick turnaround. Monitoring and diagnosing AIE now involves little more than checking a screen or two in the AIE Administrator Console.

The key new administration features in AIE 3.5 include:

• System Status — a one stop view of AIE system health
• Performance Monitor — a rich visualization of key AIE performance metrics
• System Events — a filterable collection of all system events emanating from AIE

Each view offers visual insights into what's happening in AIE at any given moment, simplifying system administration. As a result, the time to discover and resolve issues is shortened, and the user experience is improved.

A new System Health Banner, which appears on every screen in the Administrator Console, summarizes the holistic picture of AIE health for administrators. The banner complements the System Status view, which — as the default view in the console — breaks AIE's status down into individual areas: Node Health, Connector Status, Important Events, Index Status and System Performance.

This view allows administrators to easily connect the dots and essentially helps them answer the question "Is there a problem with my system right now that needs my attention?." They are able to consume larger sets of information quickly and target the parts that may be relevant without visiting respective detailed views in other parts of the Admin Console.

This Administrator Console presents you with unified answers rather than forcing you to sort through lengthy tables of numbers as we see in legacy management user interfaces. For instance, with the Connectors view, users can now see connectors that are not running as expected, scan the list of recent events in the adjacent Important Events view and start to compile a set of root causes behind any connector issues without ever leaving the System Status view. Events at a warning or fatal level can be investigated to quickly ascertain what specific AIE instances or connectors were affected and why. The Event Acknowledgement Dialog solves the dual purpose of providing all pertinent information on the event and letting the user mark the event as being seen and/or resolved.

Index Status not only describes a selected index's configuration, but also related statistics. Looking at this information, one can determine for instance, if the index size has doubled within a day, indicating a potential performance spike. The Performance view's graphical visualization of crucial metrics lets you pinpoint bottlenecks that may warrant immediate attention.

Consider a scenario where, as an administrator, you notice that the System Health Banner is reporting a warning event that occurred in the past 24 hours. You go over to the System Status view and find that an event occurred pointing to low disk space on a node. If unchecked, this might become a factor in creating search performance and node health related problems. You open the Event Details dialog and dig deeper into the event description to find more information about the node. At this point, you can make an informed decision on adding more disk space and taking additional measures.

On the new Performance Monitor view, we provide even deeper insight and flexibility by giving you more than 700 pre-built metrics to graph. By creating multiple graphs, grouping specific metrics together onto one graph and zooming and panning, while having system events superimposed on the timeline, you can chart out a more informed investigation. Unlike the System Status view, which is intended to push summarized, timely and relevant information to you, the Performance Monitor helps you understand specific aspects of the system.

For instance, let's say that users of an application using AIE reported issues with sluggish search functionality today around noon. One could quickly create a graph and add specific metrics like:

• Uptime across all nodes
• memoryPct — i.e. percentage of memory being used
• os.memory.free — i.e. free memory in the OS
• nodeCPU across nodes — the CPU usage across all nodes

Looking at these metrics in parallel over a timeframe, one can zero in on the bottleneck that was causing search to be slow.

For our customers, these are game changing capabilities. As Fahim Siddiqui, Chief Product Officer, IntraLinks states, "AIE's event-driven system and performance management have set a new standard of excellence that means we are able to proactively identify and resolve issues. For us, Attivio's Active Intelligence Engine is not just a technology; it's a key piece of our overall commitment to providing the best possible experience for our customers."

As we move forward, we could not be more excited. We have some cool new features lined up that will showcase Attivio's innovative user centric approach, not only in managing AIE but also in effectively putting the power of unified information access to work in your organization.

Author Bio
KD Singh Arneja has been with Attivio as Principal Engineer for over 2 years. KD has over fifteen years of extensive experience in designing, architecting and implementing enterprise level applications in multiple domains. Before joining Attivio, he was at MRO Software (now IBM) where he was a Lead Engineer for user interface of the MAXIMO Enterprise Suite. Prior to IBM, KD helped various software vendors develop large-scale web applications in areas such as Marketing, CRM, Data Analytics, Reporting and BI. He is an early adopter of technologies related to User Interface and User Experience Design fields. KD holds an MSc in Information Technology from University of Liverpool (UK). KD is also a Certified Scrum Master and Scrum Professional and loves building UI intensive applications using agile methodologies. He is also an accomplished Table Tennis and Cricket player.

---

Learn more! Download the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine datasheet!

Attivio AIE enables organizations to rapidly acquire, integrate and correlate enterprise information - structured data and unstructured content alike - in ways other solutions simply cannot match.

AIE was built from the ground up as a unified information access platform with unmatched agility. By easily combining related data and content without being constrained by a static data model, AIE enables quick iteration and deployment of new solutions, for rapid time-to-value while reducing risk.

---

Just how user friendly is the Attivio Active Intelligence Engine (AIE)?  The short answer is, AMAZINGLY friendly! I was recently tasked with building a set of connectors to interact with Jive, a social business solution, for a prospective client. As it was just my second week on the job, I was understandably apprehensive (queue the ominous horn section).

Armed only with a high-level overview of the technology and some pointers from a colleague, I set off on my first foray into the world of AIE. I’d have to draw on my extensive experience configuring client-specific SaaS implementations and countless hours of wading through the proverbial weeds of the XML world.  I rolled up my sleeves and watched intently over my co-worker’s shoulder as he configured the first connector.  He fired up the web browser, logged into Attivio’s Admin UI, and, with just a couple of clicks and a cluster of keystrokes, he created a connector!  Then it was on to the connector’s workflow, responsible for ingesting the Jive content in the form of JSON. “Click, click, click.” Done. Could it be that simple? Where was the XML, the schema-validation errors, and the missing or mismatched close tags?

Then, it was my turn; “It seems simple enough,” I thought, “but he’s clearly done this before.” I still wasn’t convinced that I’d fare as well as my more seasoned teammate. To my delight, I was able to duplicate his success, without the toe-stubbing agony that I’d experienced with other platforms. And sure enough, I was able to see tangible results: data extracted from Jive visible in Attivio’s Simple Search UI. The aptly named Simple Search UI was similarly easy to grasp. Of course, there is always a learning curve when working with an unfamiliar technology, and, yes, I did have a few questions here and there. But the point is, with just a brief tutorial and a touch of support, I was able to build a functional set of connectors, in just a few days.

Why does any of this matter? As a new employee, my experience was akin to that of a new customer. With some introductory training and a little coaching, I was able to get behind the wheel and drive a configuration of my own. More importantly, I experienced first-hand the culmination of teamwork into the successful implementation of a truly powerful and innovative product.

Author Bio

Mike Schiraldi joined Attivio in January of 2013 and holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Connecticut. Prior to Attivio, Mike worked as both an Integration Specialist and as a Sustaining Engineer for Andera.  He worked in many capacities, ranging from customer implementation to Tier 3 support and maintenance of back-end infrastructure.

A new revolution is under way that's much bigger than Big Data: the Industrial Internet — a means for creating new business value by unifying the power of people, data and the industrial systems the world depends on.

GigaOm's Jon Bruner has written extensively about the Industrial Internet, describing it as installing intelligence above the level of individual machines — enabling remote control, optimization at the level of the entire system and sophisticated machine-learning algorithms that can work extremely accurately because they take into account vast quantities of data generated by large systems of machines as well as the external context of every individual machine.

GE is at the forefront of the discussion about the potential of the Industrial Internet revolution, which, according to GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, will add about $15 trillion to global GDP by 2030, the equivalent of adding another U.S. economy to the world.

This Industrial Internet is not about a world run by robots, it is about combining the world's best technologies to solve our biggest challenges. It's about economically and environmentally sustainable energy, curing the incurable diseases, and preparing our infrastructure and cities for the next 100 years.

Jeff Immelt, Nov. 28, 2012, GigaOm

As the head of a growing company that is very fortunate to work with GE (having them as both an investor and a customer on multiple engagements), I am thrilled to see them take such a visionary role in this important topic.

Early in my career working in the life sciences market, there was a lot of talk about shifting the focus of patient care from reactively prescribing medications to advancing the field of proactive advanced diagnostics. While the benefits of doing this are obvious, the challenges were significant, not the least of which was the need for a cultural shift to get people to be more proactive about their health. I view the Industrial Internet as a huge enabler in driving this change forward, as it shifts the point of access to information to the moment of action versus a later time of reflection.

We are just now entering the era when the right technologies are available that allow us to align analytics with those critical moments of action. Business intelligence (BI), for example, has undergone an exciting transition to more agile and real-time BI, driven by innovative companies like our partners QlikView, Tableau and TIBCO Spotfire. They provide easy access to analytics and data visualization as things are actually taking place.

While an actionable flow of data from sensor-laden machines and instruments holds great potential for revealing new insights and supporting better decisions across many industries, integrating and correlating that data with the context of human-generated content and intelligence completes the vision and potential for the Industrial Internet. Just imagine the power of combining diagnostic data with the observations found in patient examination notes generated by medical practitioners and specialists.

Or let's take a look at one of Attivio's customers — a global manufacturer in the Fortune 10. The company knows everything there is to know about the equipment they sell, such as its age, where it was manufactured, utilization rates, and what component parts are included. A wide spectrum of climates, performance and environmental factors are also closely monitored and combined, as well as mountains of sensor data. And finally, there is a wealth of human-generated content captured in notes from their CRM systems, customer service logs, field technician notes and much more.

Working with Spotfire, Attivio brings all of this information together so the company can proactively monitor performance, identify trends, understand why those trends are taking place, improve responsiveness and increase customer satisfaction at levels well beyond what is possible working with sensor data alone.

The ability to gain a single unified view into the performance of millions of pieces of equipment and leverage the context and intelligence of a global network of expert commentary enables a new level of business success, from the level of an individual piece of equipment to an entire product line. One major goal Mr. Immelt shared in his GigaOm article is to attack the $284 billion in annual waste in the airline industry that is caused by fuel inefficiency, unscheduled aircraft maintenance and delayed flights.

As a young company, we at Attivio look forward to doing some very big things and we see our mission closely aligned with the tremendous vision of many outstanding companies like GE.

---

Completing the Big Data Picture with Unified Information Access The whitepaper explores the business value of Extreme Information, a significantly wider enterprise issue above and beyond Big Data alone. Readers will discover how unified information access (UIA) technology uniquely completes the Big Data picture by integrating Big Data (typically structured or semi-structured data) directly with unstructured content for the discovery of brand new business insights that might otherwise go undetected.

---