Massive Analytic: The First Precognitive Analytics Platform
October 1, 2015
Let me reflect a moment. IBM is doing cognitive computing. I am assuming that the on going PR and marketing activities are accurate representation of money making technologies.
Massive goes IBM one better. The Massive Analytic outfit claims on its Web site that it delivers “effortless data driven decisions.” The product or service is Oscar AP, which allows you to “analyze all your data with artificial precognition.”
Interesting. About five weeks ago, I read “SAP, Oracle and HP Don’t Get Big Data, Claims Massive Analytic Chairman.” In the article, I learned:
Large IT vendors such as SAP, Oracle and HP don’t understand how to properly help their customers to make the most of big data, being more concerned about locking them into their ecosystems than providing them with true analytical insight. That’s according to George Frangou, executive chairman and founder of “precognitive data analytics” platform Oscar AP, which Frangou described as “an AI that allows people to foresee the future and the outcome of their decisions” which “makes Minority Report real”.
That reminded me of Recorded Future, an outfit partially funded by the Alphabet Google thing and In-Q-Tel, the US government intelligence community’s investment fund. Recorded Future rolled out in 2008 after a year or so of gestation. Massive Analytic took its first breath in 2010. I assume the wiggle room created by the term “precognitive” allows Massive Analytic to claim the adjective “first.”
The write up about Massive Analytic contained a statement which I found interesting. I circled this in red, gentle reader:
according to Frangou, larger competitors such as SAP, Oracle and HP “don’t get it” when it comes to making the most of big data and analytics. “They don’t get it because the driver for them is to sell kit. … You’re into millions of dollars before you start,” he said, attacking the aggressive sales tactics of the big vendors, which he said are designed solely to sell the product and not to provide support. “And by the way, the actual algorithms don’t scale either, so you’re into lots of people and manual intervention,” he added. Because of this, Frangou said Massive Analytic is “quite unashamedly following a displacement strategy to displace the incumbents because they’re not getting it”. He added that SAP HANA, Oracle Exalytics and HP Haven are essentially the same product because they’re built on the same base code.
It is true that most analytics vendors recycle what the engineers and mathematicians with MBAs learned in their university courses. I am not sure about the “algorithms don’t scale.” There are issues with algorithms, but as the work by SRCH2 shows, there is a great deal of innovation opportunity in optimization.
But the point which I find slightly jarring is the reference to SAP, Oracle, and HP “built on the same base code.”
Well, maybe. SAP uses home brew code (anyone remember TREX), acquired stuff from Business Objects (Inxight), and open source snippets. Oracle uses the wild and crazy home brew code, acquired code from “analytics” outfits like Endeca, and confections from some of the Oracle partner ecosystem. HP—an example for MBA cases studies for the next couple of decades—uses home brew, acquired technology from outfits like Autonomy, and probably scripts written by the Board of Directors and Meg Whitman in their spare time.
What the three companies share is, therefore:
- Code written by employees and contractors
- Code from open source and licensed libraries
- Code from companies acquired in moments of great wisdom.
The wrappers each of these companies exposes to its customers and partners make it easy to use the popular programming conventions, recycle structured query language, and exploit reasonably stable Web conventions.
I would suggest that once one looks under the hood of one of these companies’ projects, there will be a world of differences. There is a simple reason or two.
First, some familiar bits and lots of unfamiliar or downright extraterrestrial methods translate to job security and on going consulting work. Who wants to lose a night Oracle DBA job? Not anyone I know.
Second, enterprise software is about customization. I know the yap about enterprise apps, but these apps are little more than customized scripts to allow a hapless marketer with a degree in home economics to pull down a standard report.
I will leave it to you to unravel the mysteries of precognitive analytics and the assertion that HP, Oracle, and SAP are peas in a pod.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2015
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Massive Analytic: The First Precognitive Analytics Platform : Stephen E. Arnold @ Beyond Search