MapR Technologies, Inc., provider of the industry’s only Converged Data Platform, today revealed that TransUnion (NYSE:TRU), a global risk and information solutions provider, is using the MapR Converged Data Platform to power the initial product offerings in its new Prama analytics platform.

 TransUnion recently launched Prama, a new self-service environment with advanced analytics leveraging the MapR Platform and Apache Drill. Prama provides TransUnion’s customers with market insights and historical perspectives to make better decisions and operationalise those decisions more effectively. Drill’s interactive SQL engine combines with Tableau’s visualisation layer to constitute the primary components enabling analytics in Prama Insights.

 The MapR-powered Prama Insights bases its analysis on TransUnion’sanonymised consumer credit database and a seven-year historical view of data. Data sources include records compiled from over 85,000 data feeds, covering about 300 million consumers. This self-service solution allows TransUnion customers to explore data and act on insights. With this new platform, TransUnion is allowing customers direct access to their content, but with the power of an advanced analytical platform and team of experts behind it.

 Several years ago, TransUnion recognised their legacy platforms would not be able to scale and perform at the pace their vision for nimble pivoting and trend analysis demanded. In order to transform its technology to include cutting edge capabilities, TransUnion turned to MapR and began an IT-led project focused on providing their analysts and data scientists with greater flexibility, self-service access to full volumes of data and big data insight discovery capabilities. With the success of the internal project, TransUnion realised some of this content could be offered directly to customers to give them the ability to see for themselves how their decisions compare to the marketplace.

 “With the launch of Prama, TransUnion is pushing the technology envelope,” said Kevin McClowry, director of analytic solution development for TransUnion. “From the beginning, the MapR core engineering team understood our vision and were able to scale at the level we needed. MapR gives us the ability to meet customer needs, shift when demands change and grow in more nimble ways.”

 TransUnion is experiencing the following benefits with MapR:

• Self-guided research: Customers are engaged in a new way by having direct access to relevant benchmark trends and performance data. Using Hadoop ecosystem tools along with innovations in the MapR Platform, TransUnion’s customers can deploy solutions with familiar SQL tools to provide fast, scalable and cost-effective features.
• Performance and reliability: Extensive control over performance and reliability enables TransUnion to monitor performance and demand by segmenting data into content area.
• Seamless integration with the enterprise: The use of open standard APIs make it easy to bring in all parts of the organisation. Multiple sources of data are linked and this opens doors to more analytics-based solutions.

“Prama goes well beyond analytics allowing customers to deploy their insights through highly efficient interfaces,” said Jack Norris, senior vice president, data and applications, MapR Technologies. ”Using the MapR Converged Data Platform as the foundation, Prama is able to combine comprehensive data and advanced analytics in one platform to transform lenders’ businesses.”