Vertica Systems, located in Billerica, Mass., isn’t your mother’s data base management system (DBMS).

Vertica recently built new uber-powerful software to manage huge amounts of data that linearly scales and automatically distributes to Vertica’s customers.

As Vertica CEO Chris Lynch explained to me, their biggest differentiating point from competitors is their speed of data turnover. Most DBMS’s can return usable data to customers in days, or at best, hours. Vertica returns data in close to real-time, allowing companies to use their data more effectively.

As Vertica’s VP of Products and Business Development Colin Mahony told me, their software was built with only one question in mind for their customers: “What is the ROI?”

If return on investment is something that gets companies excited about digital and software investment, we don’t know what is.

In case you don’t know how DBMS’s benefit businesses, here is an example of how Vertica can benefit a telecommunications company that Mahony offered. Let’s say a large number of customers were dropping calls on a certain stretch of highway, Vertica can identify that almost immediately and report it to the telecommunications client. This would allow the telecommunications company to immediately identify a dead zone for service and quickly begin to remedy the problem.

“Any industry that needs to improve time or save money needs analytics,” said Lynch.

Vertica Systems provides data services to almost every industry, including retail, shipping, and increasingly often, online gaming. Just like companies in real life, online gaming communities need to see how their customers interact with special pieces of their game, and quickly cure bugs and breaks in the system. Vertica is able to provide all these industries with near real-time data to help them provide the best service possible.

While it is always easy to say that your company is the best at what they do, in this case, local tech trade association MITX has agreed, recently naming them the winner of the 2010 best Analytics and Business Intelligence at their annual MITX Technology Awards.

As everyone who reads this blog knows, geo-location services such as Foursquare, which just received a massive round of funding this week, have become increasingly popular in recent months. One problem they are having though, is how to monetize. One option for them is to be to run real-time promotions for businesses, and charge them for doing it, but analyzing data in real time and reacting quickly to make sure offers like these are quality is a difficult task.

This is where Vertica could come in. As Mahony told me, their most recent product release, Vertica 4.0, can set up what the company call “conditional true events.” where if certain “truths” occur — let’s say, ten or more people are all at a certain location — that could trigger a message on a certain social network that could say “thank you,” or even offer a promotion.

That is just one example of Vertica’s possible application for geo-location companies, but with real-time data mining and analysis, the company could be a serious force in product extension and monetization in a number of realms currently in need.

While Vertica is not a new company, they recent brought on Lynch as their new CEO to inject new life into the business.

Before Vertica, Lynch had previously been the CEO of Acopia. After stepping down there, he decided not to take a new job that he didn’t believe was truly unique and featured a powerful technology. He spent 18 months searching for a new company, and was close to giving up when he finally found Vertica.

“It had an incredible optimization opportunity, but needed some nurturing,” he said, looking back.

Ironically, Vertica was located in the same office complex as his first job that got him into this industry years before.

Lynch says he believes that the Boston area is a great place for new and growing companies, especially in data management because of the amazing talent pool from MIT Sloan and Harvard Business School. He says Vertica has brought in a number of new employees from those institutions since he took the reigns.

Keep a look out for more from Vertica this year. With their new software now on the shelf, they plan to expand their presence as much as possible, including opening offices in many cities around the world.

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