HP IDOL: A Battery? Who Provides the Jumper Cables?
August 20, 2014
I read “Can HP IDOL Jumpstart the Big Data App Economy?” My first reaction was, “A Big Data app?” and then “What’s the Big Data app economy?” I ploughed into the write up and learned that:
Hewlett-Packard Co. is looking to take the driver’s seat in bringing about the era of pre-packaged analytic applications with the IDOL platform from Autonomy, and according to the head of product marketing for the subsidiary, it already has results to show for the effort.
Okay. And the evidence:
Standing out among the case studies that were being demonstrated at the conference was a clinical data management system serving as a foundation for services that each implemented the underlying functionality in a different way. Veis [HP professional] pointed at the solution as a prime example of developer ingenuity that would not be facilitated had HP not made the capabilities of IDOL available for consumption from the cloud last December.
Well, there is some work required:
Despite the tremendous amount of progress that has been made on simplifying data processing in recent years, Veiss said that operationalizing information remains a widespread painpoint.
Okay, already. Solve the problem.
Apparently there is another hurdle:
Another major challenge is mobility, which Veiss sees as the “great equalizer” for user experience, especially as it pertains to delivering data insights.
Frankly I don’t know what this means.
I suppose this type of content marketing and jargonizing will sell some folks. For me, it’s confusing. IDOL is now about 15 years old. The DRE (digital reasoning engine) requires training and that means one has to know what type of information will be processed. In order to get useful results, content known to be like the content to be processed has to be assembled as a training set. Skip this set and the results are likely to be off point.
Has HP figured out how to crack this aspect of Big Data? I thought that IDOL and DRE required the licensee to train the system so that IDOL and DRE can deliver results that are on point for the content set.
My hunch is that by shifting the focus to apps, HP may be ignoring some of the time consuming intellectual work needed to allow IDOL and DRE to show their stuff.
HP has to find a way to generate billions to pay off the Autonomy buy and then make those lines of business return high margin, sustainable revenue. Apps may make sense to an MBA. Will apps deliver the truck loads of cash HP seeks from 15 year old technology?
Let me check the Apple apps store. Nope, no app for that.
Stephen E Arnold, August 20, 2014
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