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PDQ Frequently Asked Questions
1. What does PDQ do?PDQ is a provider of hosted analytical applications to help organizations derive rapid, actionable insights from terabytes of data in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional business intelligence (BI) solutions. PDQ delivers custom analytical applications that are powered by PDQ-Explore technology, which is based on high-performance, scalable parallel computing technology that runs on low-cost commodity PC server hardware. 2. What are the business benefits of using PDQ?PDQ enables organizations to analyze and report on massive data sets that would be cost prohibitive or impractical with current IT investments. PDQ-Explore hosted analytical applications deliver query results 250 to 1000 times faster and at half the cost of traditional BI solutions. With PDQ, organizations can gain insights and answers to previously undetected problems and issues. PDQ delivers critical information at the time it is most needed - not weeks or months later. 3. What does PDQ mean by "Massive Data Sets"?We consider a massive data set to be data that is half a terabyte or larger in size as stored with traditional business intelligence systems. Data that is comprised of 50 million records or larger and/or is too complex to query in less than 2 - 5 minutes using traditional business intelligence systems is also considered to be a massive data set. 4. Who are PDQ's customers?PDQ is ideal for organizations that need to get greater leverage from their massive data sets - and reduce the operational cost of doing so. Typically these organizations are seeking to increase the speed by which problems are detected or new opportunities are identified. Because data is being generated and collected faster than ever before, organizations are looking for ways to turn their vast data stores into knowledge that can be cost-effectively acted upon. PDQ's customers include Fortune 500 organizations, the U.S. government, and leading universities and research institutions. Example applications include warranty parts analysis, early warning system detection, fraud detection, claims analysis, customer segmentation and targeting, and others. 5. How does PDQ provide results so much faster and cheaper than conventional BI approaches?PDQ-Explore hosted analytical applications take advantage of a powerful parallel computing architecture. This allows applications to run on low-cost commodity PC hardware - rather than on expensive hardware that other software packages require. Additionally, PDQ's natural hierarchical database structure eliminates costly and time-consuming table joins on massive data sets - a step that is required with traditional BI solutions. This enables complete, massive data sets to be processed and analyzed in a time and cost that is acceptable and affordable. 6. What makes PDQ different from other BI providers?PDQ hosted analytical applications deliver unprecedented speed and performance against data sets that are too large or too expensive to be processed with the hardware other BI software requires. Because PDQ analytical applications can run on low-cost commodity PC hardware hosted at PDQ, organizations can dramatically reduce the operational costs of developing, deploying and managing the application in-house. For each client, PDQ brings extensive industry and technical expertise to bear on application design, development, deployment and on-going maintenance. 7. How can I take advantage of PDQ's Demographic Services Expertise?PDQ's team includes leading experts in the field of demography and demographic data analysis. We help corporations, researchers and individuals get answers from major demographic data sources, such as the U.S. Census. In fact, PDQ offers the most complete set of publicly available demographic data, including detailed knowledge of U.S. Census microdata files. This information also can be combined with other applications, such as a customer or prospecting database to further refine customer acquisition campaigns. 8. How will PDQ-Explore fit within my current infrastructure?PDQ-Explore analytical applications are typically hosted at PDQ, but they can also reside at your organization. The applications run on standard PC server hardware, and can be securely accessed with a Web browser. PDQ-Explore can take data from a wide variety of sources, including most databases and data analysis tools. Examples include text, CSV, TSV, fixed format text, SAS, Excel, dBase, S-Plus, Stata, SPSS, and dozens of others. 9. How will you keep our data and results secure?PDQ-Explore hosted applications are secured through SSL and secure user ID and passwords. Other security measures will be implemented as requested by the client. 10. How do you receive and update our data within the PDQ-Explore application?PDQ supports a number of methods to update the PDQ-Explore application dataset daily, weekly or monthly. We extract data from a client's core database and transform the data as the application requirements specify. We then transmit the data to a PDQ server to build a client's revised PDQ-Explore dataset. PDQ can receive a client's data by network or overnight mail using high capacity disk drives. 11. What types of reports do you produce?PDQ custom analytical applications deliver summary reports that can be used as is, or explored further through iterative, ad hoc querying. These reports are accessed from a Web browser and can be readily extracted into Excel spreadsheets and other database or analytic packages. PDQ can generate presentation-quality reports. 12. Can you export data into SAS or SPSS?Yes. Many PDQ extract formats are possible, including native SAS formats (sas7bdat), or SPSS. 13. What types of Support does PDQ offer?We offer a range of technical support services, from providing a web-based support application and technical FAQs to offering phone and on-site support services. Our team of data analysts and demographic researchers are also available for support and consultation over the phone or on-site. 14. How do I purchase PDQ-Explore?PDQ-Explore hosted analytical applications are customized to meet the unique business requirements of each organization. Clients work with PDQ's industry and data management experts to determine which applications will deliver the greatest impact - quantitatively and qualitatively. From there, projects are scoped and priced. |
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