In-Memory Technology Speeds Up Data Analytics

What's new-nearly a quarter century later-is the sharp rise in interest now surrounding in-memory technology. "The last two years have been the biggest change for us. In-memory has become really hot and...in terms of applications, it has just exploded," Gaskell says.

Financial services and telecommunication firms had been Kognitio's bread and butter, but now in-memory demand is surfacing in markets such as retail, he notes.

Terracotta's Allen said he has seen interest in in-memory in financial services, logistics, ecommerce, government and healthcare, among other sectors. "That lightbulb is going off everywhere. People are saying, 'How do I leverage this'" he says.

As demand grows, the number of vendors offering in-memory technology has also increased. In May, for example, Teradata introduced its Intelligent Memory offering, which it says lets customers exploit memory through capabilities built into the company's data warehouses.

"There's no need for a separate appliance," said Alan Greenspan, a spokesman for Teradata. The technology tracks the temperate of data, he adds, moving hot, frequently used data into memory.