The Fastest Way To Make Sense Of Big Data

Business needSynerScope needed a black-box

solution. It looked for a partner that

could provide a powerful hardware

platform and offer global support.

Solution

The company worked with Dell

OEM Solutions to configure

GPU-accelerated Dell PowerEdge

servers with SynerScope software.

The solution can be deployed

at customer sites globally and is

supported by Dell ProSupport.

Benefits• Dell solution helps to triple growth

year-on-year

• Global hardware support

network means SynerScope can

concentrate on software

• Partnership with Dell opens doors

to large enterprise customer

markets

• GPU-accelerated hardware is a

perfect fit for graphics-intensive

analysis

Solutions at a glance• Big Data

• OEM Solutions

The fastest way to make sense of big dataBig data start-up in the Netherlands expands into new markets and secures future success with OEM partner

Customer profile

Company SynerScope

Industry Software

Development

Country The Netherlands

Website www.synerscope.com

“What puts smiles on the faces of our customers is the speed with which we deliver, starting with deployment and all the way to new insights.” Jan-Kees Buenen, CEO, SynerScope

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“ Dell is a perfect fit. It can supply the hardware service for our customers, which takes away a big headache for us. This was the main question we had when looking for an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] partner.” Jan-Kees Buenen, CEO, SynerScope

The data that devices produce might be in the form of retail sales records, data from a GPS tracker, social media comments or clicks on a website. Dealing with these growing volumes of data – big data – is a significant challenge for most organisations today.

Searching for meaningSynerScope, based in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, has recently been experimenting with big data. Its projects include health monitoring using bracelets, telematics data analysis in car insurance and leasing, and tracking RFID-labelled parts in complex assembly processes like that of aeroplanes. Primarily, the company deals with “big data in the last mile.” SynerScope CEO Jan-Kees Buenen explains: “Big data can only help us if we can derive meaning from it. Somebody has to be able to understand it. We concentrate on how to get information into a human brain.” When working with very large data sets, often a data scientist will produce a report that a domain expert can interpret. This process takes time and can be expensive. SynerScope’s goal is to get domain experts involved earlier in the data processing cycle to shorten it dramatically.

Originally part of the Information Visualisation Group at Eindhoven University of Technology, SynerScope has developed software to simultaneously present huge amounts of data in an understandable way. Buenen uses the analogy of an MRI scanner. The software outputs

a fully interactive and intuitive visualisation, which means you don’t have to be a data scientist to drill down into the data. “Because we use dense visualisations, we can defer and reduce the data cleaning and modelling stages. Especially if the person using our tools is a domain expert, he or she will quickly learn to recognise data patterns. It becomes a very efficient human-computer interaction,” says Buenen.

Ground-breaking graphicsSynerScope delivers the world’s fastest solution for making sense of big data through advanced scientific visualisations using the graphics processing unit (GPU). When customers started asking for a black-box solution, SynerScope devised a way of pre-installing the software onto a device, providing a solution that would easily integrate with any existing infrastructure.

Across the planet, billions of computing devices are

producing data every second of every day. The fact that

more and more of these devices are connected to the

internet has led to the term the Internet of Things. It is one

of the most exciting fields of IT innovation today.

Products & Services

Services

Dell Support Services – Dell ProSupport with Mission

Critical

Dell OEM Services

Hardware

Dell PowerEdge R710/R730/R920 servers with Intel Xeon processors

NVIDIA GRID graphics cards

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“Our software runs on high-performance computing platforms that most of our customers haven’t implemented before,” says Buenen. “Our customers are happy to buy black-box solutions. If all we did was sell our software, we’d leave them with the task of configuring an entirely new type of hardware and software stack. It would create a lot of external dependencies, which would slow down execution. What puts smiles on the faces of our customers is the speed with which we deliver, starting with deployment and all the way to new insights.”

Because of the graphics processing power required, SynerScope works with GPU-accelerated systems to deliver its visualisations. As a result, it has always paid close attention to developments in this field. When NVIDIA announced its new GRID cards that were optimised for virtualized applications, SynerScope saw a chance to move away from its previous fat-client model, and to deliver its solution on a server based in a customer’s data centre.

Identifying the perfect partnerAt the 2013 NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference in California, Buenen and his team met Dell high-performance computing experts. As a next step, the Dell consultants travelled to Eindhoven and both parties quickly realised that the Dell OEM Solutions team would be the perfect partner for SynerScope’s growing business. SynerScope had a clear idea of the software configuration it wanted, but was happy to talk to Dell about the hardware. “Because we had unique requirements for how the GPU would work with other components in the server, it was great to have deep technical conversations with people at Dell about this,” says Buenen. Dell OEM Solutions provided SynerScope with a proof of concept and demo units during the test phase. The final configuration comprised SynerScope’s visualisation package based on Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel Xeon processors.

Round-the-clock support, around the worldOnce the physical device was designed, thoughts turned to the real challenge: support. Buenen says: “We’re a small company in the Netherlands. Our expertise lies in software development. We simply can’t afford the time or money to build relationships with support organisations in different countries.” As SynerScope looks to expand into U.S. and European markets, it will be partnering with Dell to provide the hardware and support backbone for its big data solution. “Dell is a perfect fit. It can supply the hardware service for our customers, which takes away a big headache for us. This was the main question we had when looking for an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] partner. It’s crucial to our black-box model,” says Buenen. Dell experts also advised SynerScope on moving its model to Dell’s 13G server platform in line with the product roadmap.

All SynerScope’s appliances that are installed at its customers’ sites are backed by Dell ProSupport with Mission Critical. This means that if there are any hardware issues, a local Dell engineer will be on-site and have the problem resolved within 4 hours. Buenen remembers one example where a client had a disk failure. “We thought it might be a software issue,” he says. “But we conducted an initial check-up via our remote interface. When we realised it was a hardware issue, we contacted the Dell team, which replaced the disk within 4 hours. It’s great to know we have a partner that can do that, no matter where our clients are.”

Future growth, togetherThis partnership is already proving hugely beneficial to SynerScope’s turnover. Since it started working with Dell, 80 per cent of its sales have come from the black-box model based on Dell servers. Buenen says: “Without this contribution we wouldn’t have been able to increase our turnover from

“ Because we had unique requirements for how the GPU would work with other components in the server, it was great to have deep technical conversations with people at Dell about this.” Jan-Kees Buenen, CEO, SynerScope

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€65,000 to €500,000 to €1.45 million over the past 3 years.” In addition to this, server sales bring better profit margins. Any geographical limitations that came with SynerScope’s previous fat-client model are eliminated.

Both parties realise the mutual opportunities for growth that could come from Dell acting as a sales channel for SynerScope in addition to being a delivery partner. As a trusted organisation, Dell is in a good position to meet the needs of big corporations. In this way, SynerScope’s partnership with Dell is helping it reach firms that prefer to be served by a large, global organisation. “Once we have a repeatable sales model for our black-boxes in a certain sector, we can ask Dell to take that forward

in countries where we don’t have a presence. We can install the software remotely, and Dell can deploy it at the customer’s site,” says Buenen. “For large organisations, I’d prefer to sell our products through a global company such as Dell, which can deal with legal and regulatory challenges. Doing it this way puts less pressure on staff in our small office in the Netherlands.” Dell is also using SynerScope’s black-boxes at its solution centres to demonstrate big data capabilities to new clients of all sizes.

Dell, the Dell logo, Dell ProSupport and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. NVIDIA and the NVIDIA logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Availability and terms of Dell Software, Solutions and Services vary by region. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. This case study is for informational purposes only. Dell makes no warranties — express or implied — in this case study. Reference Number: 10021064 © March 2015, Dell Inc. All Rights Reserved

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“ For large organisations, I’d prefer to sell our products through a global company such as Dell, which can deal with legal and regulatory challenges. Doing it this way puts less pressure on staff in our small office in the Netherlands.” Jan-Kees Buenen, CEO, SynerScope