Release and Connect Information Locked in Enterprise Applications with Polyspot
February 21, 2013
Competitive advantage looms large for those companies that have already explored the market of big data solutions and have started to deploy these technologies designed to produce a ROI. A recent post from the Harvard Business Review asks companies whether or not they are currently armed with the tools and knowledge for success with their big data solutions. Big Data: Can You Seize the Opportunity? offers a video with information for companies looking to execute a big data initiative.
The video’s purpose is summarized in the blog post:
But Donald Marchand and Joe Peppardhave found that when Big Data and analytics projects are implemented like other major IT initiatives, they often fail to produce the results desired by executives. Their conclusion: these projects should be implemented differently from other IT projects and should be based on understanding how people create and use information. Ultimately, businesses need to focus on the business problem and choose the technology that best addresses that problem.
Some technological tools do not provide the necessary infrastructure to connect multiple silos of information locked up in various applications across the enterprise. There are tools that have been devoted to amassing a library of these connectors to deliver information such as PolySpot. We recommend looking into these types of big data solutions.
Megan Feil, February 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Information At Work Collects Data But Delivers Insights
February 20, 2013
Industries from education to business to politics and even government are using big data to inform decisions and to achieve efficiency and transparency. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a news story on the OECD Observer from Martine Durand, Director, OECD Directorate of Statistics recently called, “Can Big Data Deliver On It’s Promise?”
Revealing statistics were shared in this article. For example, according to the UN Global Pulse, more data was created in 2011 than in the whole of human history.
The article states:
International organisations are getting involved too, the creation of UN Global Pulse being a case in point. The OECD has also been harnessing the potential of big data. Collecting statistics and understanding trends are the daily bread of our organisation, and we have built innovative, interactive tools to draw in more and better information from the public. This, in turn, feeds into improving the policy recommendations we give to governments.
The enterprise is an area where we see a huge potential for efficiency to be increased. Tools like Information at Work from PolySpot provide the cross function infrastructure that companies need to collect and deliver information in real time.
Megan Feil, February 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Source and Deliver Information Across Multiple Enterprise Applications with PolySpot
February 19, 2013
We stumbled across an article from TLNT that discusses big data as it pertains to the HR world in light of some other articles from major sources like the New York Times and SAP. “Big Data: It’s Just Useless Information Unless You Put It To Work” asks businesses to inquire within their HR departments about using data to ask deeper questions about the way people work.
The author recommends using big data, and the strategic and social recognition possible through it, to inform and gauge performance amongst employees.
The referenced article enlightens us on the topic of using big data to increase efficiency in employee work patterns:
Translating that to the world of people management, data can transform how we view individuals, their capabilities and their work by giving us more information to correct flawed or incomplete perceptions and, as Brooks said, “illuminate patterns of behavior we haven’t yet noticed.” This is particularly powerful in terms of employee behaviors related to what we say is most important to our organizations – our core values.
While big data and the technological solutions needed to access it may help uncover employee work patterns, it will also become necessary then to tap into multiple enterprise applications they use in order to gauge their performance. Solutions like PolySpot enable both sourcing data and information delivery across different file types.
Megan Feil, February 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Delving into Dark Data
February 19, 2013
Big Data is by now a familiar term in the world of content management and enterprise search. But while Big Data refers to the enormous amount of data being automatically generated at every moment, there is another level of data within the larger group. Dark Data may be the next frontier. Paul Doscher, CEO of Lucidworks, thinks so. He wrote on the topic in his piece “Searching for Dark Data.”
Doscher defines Dark Data:
“Welcome to the world of Dark Data, the humongous mass of constantly accumulating information generated in the Information Age. Whereas Big Data refers to the vast collection of the bits and bytes that are being generated each nanosecond of each day, Dark Data is the enormous subset of unstructured, untagged information residing within it.”
Dark Data definitely presents a challenge, but just as Big Data, it also presents a substantial potential value. The meaning that can be mined out of Dark Data makes it the next challenge to be tackled on the plate of developers. Since LucidWorks has been able to adapt their Lucene and Solr enterprise technology to successfully meet the challenge of Big Data, it will not be a huge leap for them to tackle Dark Data.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 19, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
PolySpot Uses Disorganized Data and Churns Out Deliverable Insights
February 18, 2013
Big data is exploitable, increasingly necessary for enterprise functionality as organizations become more complex and can provide endless opportunities for ROI. However, there are some organizations that have not fully realized their potential to tap into this resource. ZDNet‘s article “Big Data: Why Most Businesses Just Don’t Get It” discusses how these organizations want to look at multiple pieces of data across different information sources but cannot execute the technology and manpower required.
Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Debra Logan offers up her insights in the referenced article stating that 95 to 97 percent of organizations she knows are only exploring possible big data solutions currently. However, research from Microsoft says 75 percent of organizations are implementing solutions in the next 12 months.
The article quotes Logan:
Software companies in general have no interest in helping you make anything smaller because they make their money from more data and the more disorganised that data is, the more money they make. The most advanced industry in terms of big data is retail. It’s the stuff they do with all the RFID, the supply chain, with loyalty cards. Those are big-data problems.
Enterprise organizations are faced with the very real problem of too much information that is scattered across various departments in silos. However, there are solutions like PolySpot that use connectors to break the barriers of incompatible data types to draw out important knowledge and information.
Megan Feil, February 18, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
A Big Data Partnership
February 17, 2013
Big data inspire companies to partner up and pool their research and products. Datameer, the Hadoop big data analytics leader, and Caserta Concepts, a consulting and technology business specializing in big data analytics, BI, and data warehousing, have formed a joint partnership. Virtual Strategy runs through the details in the article, “Caserta Concepts Announces Partnership With Datameer For Big Data Analytics On Hadoop.”
The companies have paired up, because of a study done by Ventana Research’ entitled, “The Challenge of Big Data” by Mark Smith. The research explains that average users find it hard to make sense of the data Hadoop captures, because they are more used to working with Excel or other BI intelligence dashboards. Datameer’s software allows the everyman user to read and harness the power of Hadoop with familiar dashboards and tools.
“’We are very pleased to partner with Datameer, the only provider of big data analytics built natively on Hadoop’” said Joe Caserta, founder and CEO of Caserta Concepts. ‘As organizations struggle to make sense of all their available data, Datameer’s big data analytics and discovery solution makes Hadoop’s power and flexibility instantly accessible to business analysts and data scientists alike.’”
What does this partnership teach us? It teaches that while big data is desirable, many users do not have the experience using analytics tools. Big data tools need to be user-friendlier if anything is going to be gleaned from it.
Whitney Grace, February 17, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Big Data and Small Data: Tesla and the Gray Lady
February 15, 2013
I don’t want to let this anecdote slip by without capturing it. The addled goose remains quietly in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. I ignore the bleats of public relations professionals who “assure me” that unwanted email to me is not spam. You can track the exploits of this PR outfit yourself at North of Nine Communications.
Nope, a more interesting New York style tussle is underway and it concerns what I call small data. In our pulse pounding world of Big Data with IBM Watson tackling cancer, I find small data interesting.
Here’s the story as I understand it. A big newspaper, not too far from the North of Nine outfit, collected some small data about the performance of an electric car. I don’t know about you, but these electric cars stop running when the batteries are exhausted. No big surprise.
The car maker performed various tests and analyses and presented small data to explain that the big newspaper’s small data were incorrect or maybe just out of round. I don’t know, and I don’t care. If you are curious about the status of the dust up, read “Tesla CEO Reveals Evidence against New York Times’ Damning Review in Blog Post.”
My point is that when two outfits cannot agree on small data which presumably both outfits have scrutinized closely, what confidence should you, gentle reader, have in the outputs of Big Data systems. These are based on methods which most folks, including the addled goose, do not understand. Forget the data’s integrity. Let’s just assume that Big Data works like a bulldozer and smoothes out the imperfections.
Well, data and methods don’t smooth out anything. The choices made and the interpretation make a difference for both small data and Big Data.
My point: If you cannot get the small data right, how can we have confidence that Big Data’s outputs, methods, systems, and processes are right? I can’t and won’t. Spats about small data are amusing but the spats illuminate the cloud of craziness which blankets some interesting activities.
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2013
Information Delivery Solutions Maximize Value of Big Data
February 15, 2013
It is no surprise that we are seeing many exciting developments happening on a more specific level in the midst of these larger cultural and technological changes following the rise of big data. Science Daily discusses how a crowdsourcing platform that initially began in the commercial sector can solve a complex biological problem even faster than former, traditional approaches in the article, “Solving Big Data Bottleneck: Scientists Team with Business Innovators to Tackle Research Hurdles.”
Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School and London Business School have partnered with TopCoder, a crowdsourcing platform with a global community of 450,000 algorithm specialists and software developers, and have discovered that this community is highly adept in solving the kinds of problems typically delegated to post docs.
The article quotes Karim Lakhani, associate professor in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School:
This study makes us think about greater efficiencies in academic research can be obtained. In a traditional setting, a life scientist who needs large volumes of data analyzed will hire a postdoc to create a solution, and it could take well over a year. We’re showing that in certain instances, existing platforms and communities might solve these problems better, cheaper and faster.
Many organizations in the business sector, in addition to the realm of academics, are searching for more efficient ways to store, organize and process big data in order to maximize the value from it. Information delivery solutions are great tools in enabling organizations to access insights from big data across the entire company.
Megan Feil, February 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
Solr Unleashed Offered by LucidWorks
February 15, 2013
LucidWorks is a company offering commercial support, consulting, training, and value-added software to the open source Apache Lucene and Solr technologies. LucidWorks not only builds upon trusted open source technologies, it supports open source technology by employing committers. They also offer professional training on the open source components, even for those who are not interested in their LucidWorks Search or LucidWorks Big Data solutions. One such training opportunity is Solr Unleashed.
Read about upcoming classes:
“Having consulted with clients on Lucene and Solr for the better part of a decade, we’ve seen the same mistakes made over and over again: applications built on shaky foundations, stretched to the breaking point. In this two day class, learn from the experts about how to do it right and make sure your apps are rock solid, scalable, and produce relevant results. Also check the course outline.”
Register early for a discount on the two-day class. Opportunities are available stateside, as well as in Europe. Developers are the primary audience for the sessions, but system administrators can benefit as well. For more opportunities and to stay in the loop, contact the LucidWorks University team.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Enterprise Organizations Search for Solutions to Deliver Inisights
February 14, 2013
While ETL technologies were once good enough on their own, the era of big data has made waves for more augmenting technologies. However, Smart Data Collective points out that it is not just big data, but also the need for predictive analytics that has caused the paradigm shift. Their article “Data Integration Ecosystem for Big Data Analytics” defines common terminology related to enterprise software in the world inundated with big data through business contexts.
The author identifies the six sources of the integrated data ecosystem in a typical enterprise organization: sources, big data storage, data discovery platform, enterprise data warehouse, business intelligence portfolio, data analytics portfolio.
We learned the following from the article in regards to what processes integrated data can facilitate with greater ease and efficiency:
While the business intelligence deals with what has happened, business analytics deal with what is expected to happen. The statistical methods and tools that predict the process outputs in the manufacturing industry have been there for several decades, but only recently they are being experimented with the organizational data assets for a potential to do a much broader application of predictive analytics.
This was a useful write up as it sheds light on one of the most important topics for enterprise organizations right now dealing with getting a grip on big data. Organizations are looking for solutions that can deliver enterprise information in real time and across various departments and applications.
Megan Feil, February 14, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search.
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