Skytide Analytical Platform - Software Architecture
The Skytide Analytical Platform architecture (see Figure 1) is built on open industry standards that facilitate easy integration into any business technology environment. It features three architecture layers: the Modeling Layer, and Analysis Layer - featuring unique analytical engines offering path analysis, correlation analysis, hierarchy analysis, and entity matching - and the Presentation Layer.
Figure 1. The Skytide Analytical Platform is built on open standards, including XML, Xpath, and Java, and features the Skytide Server (consisting of the Modeling and Analysis Layers), the Skytide API SDK, and the Skytide Designer.
The Modeling Layer
The Modeling Layer consists of XML Rendering and the Analytical Model Engine. Together they normalize data from all data sources regardless of its format so that the subsequent analysis can operate on all available information. The Modeling Layer also automates the manual and time-consuming process of building and updating analytical models.
Skytide Server has a unique way of dealing with any data format by interpreting it through XML in this layer. Any data source in any format is presented as humanly readable XML to the user of the Skytide modeling environment. XML based rendering of data is paired with the analytical model engine that builds complex models based on user-defined business rules and the actual data at run-time. The modeling engine uses XPath (XML Path Language) as a modeling language to support automated creation of a wide range of analytical models, from very simple ones to extremely complex, all from the business rule-like input provided by the business user.
The resulting models support various types of analysis in the Analysis Layer.
The Analysis Layer
The Analysis Layer features four unique analytical engines that operate on the information gathered from data in the Modeling Layer to synthesize business insight:
- Correlation Engine — Detects relationships across multiple data sources and broad units of measure for different kinds of information. For example, consider contact center data about how often calls are resolved on the first try and information about agents returning late from breaks. Two different data sources and two very different units of measure, yet Skytide can identify any possible correlation between these seemingly unrelated pieces of information, providing contact center managers with a new opportunity to improve productivity.
- Hierarchy Management Engine — Identifies and aligns the common elements across multiple data hierarchies, connecting related data fields. For example, connecting financial records from two companies that have just merged, streamlining M&A operations. The Hierarchy Management Engine can also discover hierarchies or other complex data structures that are otherwise lost through data transformation and flattening, providing sharper insight into subtle relationships among data.
- Path Analysis Engine — Uncovers paths, patterns, and sequences over time that lead to a particular outcome or event, and correlates events across processes and time. For example, understanding the paths customers take through an e-commerce site can reveal very interesting customer behavior insights that would never be found by simply knowing what was ultimately purchased.
- Entity matching Engine — Finds matching entities (e.g. name, company, product), across multiple data sources, each with its own context and format. For example, discovering that two apparently different individuals are in reality the same person based on matches through chains of what appear to be unrelated entities or events, which is extremely helpful in situations involving fraud or to support intelligence gathering activities.
Skytide Server (consisting of the Modeling and Analysis Layers), makes results of the analysis available to standard presentation layer applications and tools through industry standard interfaces such as JDBC and MDX. JDBC technology is an API included in both J2SE and J2EE releases that provides cross-DBMS connectivity to a wide range of SQL databases and access to other tabular data sources, such as spreadsheets or flat files. MDX (Multidimensional Expressions Language) has been adopted by leading analytical software vendors as a standard to access data from multidimensional databases and other multidimensional data sources.
The Presentation Layer
The Presentation Layer provides a flexible, intuitive window into the outcomes of the various analysis engines so business users can gain the needed insight without any special technical assistance. The Presentation Layer supports standard presentation applications and tools, such as dashboards, spreadsheets, and report writers, so if you already have a viable reporting tool we can easily integrate the two so you get the insight from Skytide via your existing reporting application.
The Skytide Designer, as one Presentation Layer option, enables rapid design of analytical models by business users via a graphical dashboard interface. It provides point-and-click capabilities to define analytical models and manage on-going or ad-hoc analysis projects.
The Skytide API SDK (software developer kit) enables developers to extend and integrate the Skytide platform in various operational environments.