<p align="center"><em>Dedicated team helps customers gain improved insight into structured and unstructured data stores<em></em></em></p>
<strong>MT. PLEASANT, S.C. – October 8, 2012</strong> – <a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/">eGroup</a>, the Southeast’s leading provider of <a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/what-we-do/services/cloud-services">cloud</a>, <a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/what-we-do/services/application-services">application</a> and<a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/what-we-do/services/end-user-computing"> end-user computing</a> services, today announced the launch of its Data Services Practice to help customers understand how to better leverage existing data while planning for future data requirements.

eGroup’s Data Services Practice builds upon the company’s engineering and informatics skills to deliver professional services needed for data analytic and business intelligence projects.

Ian Jones, an industry veteran whose background is deeply rooted in the design, deployment and management of complex data systems, will lead the Data Services Practice. During his three-year tenure at eGroup, Jones has been heavily involved in the firm’s Application Services Group. He has also led eGroup’s internal custom Java development focused on VMware’s vFabric platform, a lightweight, scalable, integrated middleware suite for data-intensive custom applications.

“’Big data’ has been touted as a key industry trend, but few organizations understand what it might do for them,” said Jones. “At eGroup, we recognize that the size of the dataset is only one factor, so we’ve purposely left the word ‘big’ out of our Data Services Practice. Data analytics is just about data — how to ingest, analyze and process data to make more-informed business decisions. Our goal is to help customers use their data to gain new business insight, whether with big data analytics or more traditional business intelligence tools.”

eGroup is currently working with several healthcare enterprises on their data analytics projects, using products such as EMC Greenplum and the open-source Apache Hadoop platform. These tools not only handle large transactional databases but unstructured data such as text files and even images.

Given its strong background and expertise with Cisco’s Unified Computing System, eGroup is well positioned to use this flexible scale-out computing platform for its big data solutions, a rapidly emerging practice eGroup is bringing to the industry.

“Our engineers can help customers break down ‘silos’ of data trapped in various applications and unstructured data files,” Jones said. “We can then help them select the right data analytics or business intelligence platform based upon the size of the dataset and the processing speed needed to obtain business insight in real time.”

Much of eGroup’s Data Services Practice is focused on consulting — helping customers of all sizes across a wide range of industries understand how to integrate data analytics into their day-to-day operations.

“We’re here to help guide customers through the cultural shift needed for deep organizational integration of data analytics practices,” said Jones. “Once that occurs, ‘big data’ becomes less mysterious. Organizations begin to see the opportunities that can be gained through data analytics and business intelligence tools.”