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GCN Home > 10/18/04 web stories

FBI stocks up on data-warehousing tools

By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff

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The FBI has bought business intelligence software to mine its Investigative Data Warehouse, an information-sharing system for agents and analysts.

The agency doled out $720,000 for analytic software and related support services from MicroStrategy Inc. of McLean, Va. The software will provide a way for FBI workers to comb through the data warehouse’s counterterrorism material and compile reports, the company said.

The FBI bought the software through the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. According to the solicitation, the agency sought online analytical processing software to work with structured information residing within a 10T data warehouse.

The agency expected that the software would work with 4G data sets, providing service to a 30,000 users, including 2,000 analysts. The software will eventually need to handle 200,000 small queries concurrently, while simultaneously working on larger, more complex queries.

The MicroStrategy buy was not the first for the Investigative Data Warehouse. Last October, the FBI bought RetrievalWare search software from Convera Corp. of Vienna, Va., for $1.5 million.

MicroStrategy’s software will provide tools for manipulating structured data—in which information has been organized in data tables. Convera’s software is primarily used for searching unstructured materials, said Gary Monroe, MicroStrategy’s government sales representative.

The Investigative Data Warehouse was formerly known as the Secure Collaborative Operational Prototype Environment [see GCN story]. Its files are drawn from multiple federal and state agencies.