Cox Automotive Selected as Finalist in Constellation SuperNova Awards Based on Cloudera-Powered Data Discovery and Analytics

Now Accepting Votes for "Data to Decisions" Category

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- September 28, 2015 -- Cloudera, the leader in enterprise analytic data management powered by Apache Hadoop™, today announced that its customer Cox Automotive has been named a finalist in the fifth annual Constellation SuperNova Awards. The Constellation SuperNova Awards recognize the leaders and teams leading the most successful disruptive technology implementation projects. According to R "Ray" Wang, chairman and founder, Constellation Research, Inc, "The 2015 SuperNova Award finalists possess a deep understanding of the elements required for successful digital transformation. They are comprised of pioneers who took risks, and staked their reputations on transformational projects that enabled their organizations to conquer Digital Darwinism."

Cox Automotive is a leading provider of vehicle remarketing services and digital marketing and software solutions for the automotive industry – primarily serving consumers, dealers, and manufacturers - through brands like Autorader.com, Kelley Blue Book, and Manheim. When Cox Enterprises established Cox Automotive to bring its more than 20 wholesale and retail automotive businesses under a single operational entity, the firm saw an opportunity to usher in new levels of efficiency and innovation by delivering better customer and consumer experiences through greater data insight.

The company saw Apache Hadoop as the ideal foundation to launch itself into its next era, and decided to adopt Apache Spark to ensure the new environment could meet the organization’s need for real-time performance. They selected Cloudera’s platform based on the company’s vision, proven experience in the marketplace, performance, and manageability. With Cloudera, Cox Automotive has achieved its goal of delivering new, better customer experiences through greater data insight, while improving operational efficiencies.

For example, Cox has improved its speed of analysis for car ad campaigns that run during the Super Bowl. Previously, prior to the Super Bowl the Technology team would have to make significant changes to existing operational systems. The systems would run nightly processes achieve the insights the business needed. These changes would introduce risk and complexity to those systems. With its enterprise data hub, Cox Automotive was able to not only get hourly updates during the 2015 Super Bowl, but real time processing of advertising influence. This data enables Cox Automotive to make recommendations to automakers and implement changes to their websites and products based on activity driven specifically by that evening’s commercials. They created a sustainable and repeatable process that can be used for any advertising event, for example they also used this same process during the NCAA College Basketball Final Four.

"When we show our analysts, executives, and Technology teams what’s possible, we can see the light bulbs going off," said Scott Salter, vice president, Enterprise Data Services, Cox Automotive. "This work has stimulated innovation and is enabling us to do things with our data that we hadn’t even thought about before."

"We’re happy to see Cox Automotive being recognized for their transformative use case," said Alan Saldich, vice president of marketing at Cloudera. "Their real-time tracking of SuperBowl ads is such a great example of a substantial business benefit that can be realized through effective use of Apache Spark on the Hadoop platform, and we’re proud to have partnered with Cox on this initiative." 

Selecting Winners

The SuperNova Award winners will be determined by a combination of public votes and judges’ votes. The judges’ votes will be weighted at 70% of the total.

Public polling opens on September 21, 2015 on the SuperNova Award page on the Constellation Research website. Cloudera encourages the general public to vote for Cox Automotive to win a 2015 SuperNova Award for innovators in disruptive technology.

Voting will take place until October 2, 2015. Vote for Cox Automotive’s SuperNova Award win here: https://www.constellationr.com/node/3137/vote/application/view/170. The winners will be announced at the SuperNova Awards Gala Dinner on November 5, 2015 in Half Moon Bay, California. The Gala Dinner will be held on the second night of Constellation’s Connected Enterprise innovation summit.

The 2015 finalists were selected from a pool of over 250 applications, and recognized by the SuperNova Award Judges as individuals who demonstrated the most forethought, creativity, and measured audacity in successfully implementing emerging technologies for their organizations.