Accenture Makes a Big Purchase to Chase Government Clients
March 20, 2015
Accenture Federal Services (AFS) is one of the leading companies that provide technology and digital solutions for the US federal government. The parent company Accenture LLP has sought to increase its amount of federal contracts as well a products and services, so the company decided to purchase Agilex Technologies, Inc says Big News Network in “Accenture Unit To Agilex Technologies.”
” ‘Acquiring Agilex will help AFS further solidify our position as an innovative leader in the federal market. Combining our digital capabilities and agile methods will accelerate our ability to help clients harness the power of emerging digital technologies and rapid, predictable systems deployment for the federal government’s most complex challenges,’ said David Moskovitz, Accenture Federal Services chief executive.”
AFS plans to use Agilex’s technology to improve its own analytics, cloud, and mobile technology for federal organizations. Agilex, like its new owner, has worked with every cabinet-level department and federal agencies in defense, intelligence, public safety, civilian and military health organizations.
AFS will have more to offer its federal clients, but it does beg the question if it will lead to a monopoly on government contracts or increase the competition?
Whitney Grace, March 20, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Vilocity 2.0 Released by Nuwave
March 17, 2015
The article on Virtual Strategy Magazine titled NuWave Enhances their Vilocity Analytic Framework with Release of Vilocity 2.0 Update promotes the upgraded framework as a mixture of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle Endeca Information Discovery. The ability to interface across both of these tools as well as include components from both in a single dashboard makes this a very useful program, with capabilities such as exporting to Microsoft to create slideshows, pre-filter and the ability to choose sections of a page and print across both frameworks. The article explains,
“The voices of our Vilocity customers were vital in the Vilocity 2.0 release and we value their input,” says Rob Castle, NuWave’s Chief Technology Officer… The most notable Vilocity deployment NuWave has done is for the U.S. Army EMDS Program. From deployment and through continuous support NuWave has worked closely with this client to communicate issues and identify tools that could improve Vilocity. The Vilocity 2.0 release is a culmination of NuWave’s desire for their clients to be successful.”
It looks like they have found a way to make Endeca useful. Users of the Vilocity Analytic framework will be able to find answers to the right questions as well as make new discoveries. The consistent look and feel of both systems should aid users in getting used to them, and making the most of their new platform.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 17, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Looker Tops $47 Million in Funding
March 12, 2015
Business intelligence, a close cousin to cyber intelligence, continues to capture venture funding attention. “BI Startup Looker Notches Up $30M Injection for Expansion” reports that Looker has more than 250 customers up from 40 in 2013. According to the write up:
The web-based Looker platform, mainly deployed in the cloud, uses proprietary SQL-based modeling language LookML and allows data analysts to give business users the ability to explore large data stores themselves instead of depending on standard reports.
The article includes this article:
“Most business intelligence is about, ‘Hey, data guy give me this set of data so that I can get an answer’. What Looker is doing is giving those data people tools they want to use – code-based tools, GitHub-integrated, all that kind of stuff – so that they can curate experiences for the business users, much like the early web developers and web masters were doing,” he [Frank Bien, CEO] said.
The service includes collaboration functions, data fusion, and an easy-to-use interface. More information about Looker is available at www.looker.com.
Stephen E Arnold, March 12, 2015
Rocket Software Explores The UniDataVerse
December 16, 2014
Rocket Software is growing their product base and Business Wire reports that “Rocket Software’s CorVu NG Business Intelligence Product Now Works With Its UniData and UniVerse Databases.” The new CorVu NG is compatible with UniData and UniVerse-U2 products. All U2 users will be transferred over to the product will not be charged any extra fees and will have access to more features, including drill down path support and Aerotext text analytics.
“Peter Richardson, Vice President and General Manager of Rocket’s business intelligence and analytics business unit, says, ‘One of the biggest advantages that our valued customers gets making this change is getting access to a wider range of Rocket services and products to help them reach their business goals. CorVu NG has the ability to work with the full suite of CorVu performance management modules, including CorStrategy, CorPlanning, CorRisk, and CorProject. This is a major enhancement for U2 customers who are interested in elevating their BI solution to one that includes not only tactical performance visualizations, but also strategic, high-level KPI tracking.’ “
It was also noted that not only is Rocket Software expanding its product base to attract more clients, but the CoVu NG software will allow their current clients to have more opportunities as well. This is in compliance with Rocket Software’s philosophy to offer a broader range of solutions to complement and supplement clients’ solutions.
Whitney Grace, December 16, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Open Source Business Intelligence Tools: A Narrow View
December 2, 2014
Last week, a person with considerable experience in business intelligence told me that interest in open source software applicable to intelligence purposes was evident in South America. I poked around and came across “5 Open Source business intelligence Tools.” I was hoping to learn about open source real-time translation tools, geo-coding components, and old-school search software that hooked into some next-generation analytics and visualization components.
Wait for it.
I was disappointed. The write up presented a short list of open source systems that are well known to me. I need more than short comments about Jaspersoft, Pentaho, BIRT, RapidMiner, and SpagoDB. The article mentions three other business intelligence tools: Knime, Tactic, and ERP BI. All good, but not enough for my needs.
One reason vendors of proprietary business intelligence systems continue to capture the attention of some organizations is that the open source community develops in some areas of the barnyard and not others. What about Elasticsearch, Ikanow, and a number of other sources for quite useful open source software that can make significant contributions to business intelligence. (I am tempted to mention some US government open source contributions like NiFi too.) I think an information gap exists.
Stephen E Arnold, December 2, 2014
Attivio Sponsors a Hackathon
November 13, 2014
Short honk: I find this item interesting: “Attivio to Sponsor Qlik World Conference 2014.” Attivio is providing financial support to a Qlik hackathon. The idea is for participants to become the “ultimate hacker for good.” See http://bit.ly/1ufoeXn. What will the hackers hack? If the goal is business intelligence, will these efforts be directed at open source content or other repositories?
There are media luminaries on the conference program; for example, Mark Cuban. The information about the program states that sessions, times, and locations are subject to change.
The only question I have is, “Is this a user conference or a commercial conference?” I know that Qlik offers software that, to me, seems to overlap with Attivio’s functionality.
With the increasing interest in without permission breaches of major systems, is a hackathon a completely positive positioning?”
My take is that this is essentially a single company affair designed to create a big marketing blast. I hope it works. As I pointed out, traditional vendors face a difficult challenge from firms that are offering what I would call “revolutionary approaches.” Watch for my upcoming Information Today write up that explains how some vendors have been leapfrogged by firms pushing information access in a new and quite useful direction.
Stephen E Arnold, November 13, 2014
List of Business Intelligence Vendors
November 3, 2014
I came across a write up called “Yellowfin a Top Performing Dashboard and Ad-Hoc Reporting BI Solution across Many Categories in BARC’s The BI Survey 14.” What I found useful about the article was the list of business intelligence vendors. I am familiar with the search companies that say there are in the business intelligence game. I am skeptical about this type of pivoting because these outfits are rarely in the automated collection business.
Here’s the list of companies in case you are tracking this market sector:
- Arcplan
- Bissantz
- BOARD
- Corporate Planning
- Cubeware
- Cyberscience
- Dimensional Insight
- Dundas
- Entrinsik
- Evidanza
- IBM Cognos BI
- Information Builders
- Microsoft Excel, Power products, and SSAS (!)
- MicroStrategy
- Oracle BI Foundation Suite
- Pentaho
- Phocas
- Pyramid Analytics
- Qlik
- SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
- Tableau
- TARGIT
- Tibco
- Yellowfin.
No enterprise search vendors on this list. Is this more than a PR problem? Is it a credibility problem for search vendors who can flip from market to market without so much as a how de doo?
Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2014
G2 Crowd Announces Business Intelligence Leaders
October 24, 2014
The article titled Tableau, Qlikview, TIBCO, SAS, and Oracle Lead G2 Crowd’s Business Intelligence Ratings on Venture Beat discusses the winners and losers of the Fall 2014 best business intelligence ratings. G2 Crowd claims the position of “unbiased” reviewers of business software. They launched in 2013 and have since collected tens of thousands of verified reviews. The leaders in BI mentioned above were headed off by Tableau Desktop in first position. The article states,
“Either there’s exceptional quality in the BI software, or BI users seem to be fairly easy-to-please people — at least those who rate the software they use. “Overall, G2 Crowd users were satisfied with the business intelligence products they reviewed,” G2 Crowd said in a statement. “Across all products, reviewers reported the product they use meets their requirements at an average rate of 81 percent, and on average reviewers said they were 81 percent likely to recommend the product they use.””
As may be obvious from the list in the article’s title, the industry leaders are all very established companies. Overall, not too many whizzy new vendors make the cut. As for the losers, those relegated to the “Niche” category of low market penetration doubled with low client satisfaction, only two companies fit the bill: Pentaho and Birst. See the full list here.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 24, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Chiliad Offline: A Precursor for Other BI Outfits
October 13, 2014
According to PacerMonitor, Chiliad, Inc. filed for bankruptcy on August 6, 2014. As you may recall, the company was a Washington, DC area analytics firm founded by Christine Maxwell of McKinley Group and Magellan fame. (Magellan became part of Excite, which also faded away.)
About two years ago, Beyond Search wrote about Chiliad and its big rocks. Also, in 2012, the company named Craig Norris, as chief executive officer. Mr. Norris (an industry leader according to Reuters) had been the CEO of Attensity, sentiment analysis outfit, which has experienced its share of strong headwinds. In the news release about his appointment, he said:
“I am excited to be joining Chiliad at an important stage in its growth. What makes or breaks an analytics company is the quality and usability of its core technology. Chiliad’s offering has proven its ability to extract critical findings from data at massive scale for both Government and Commercial customers. I am eager to see us gain recognition for our technology leadership.”
The news release included assertions by Patrick Gross (Chairman of the Chiliad board of directors) that I have encountered many times in the last five years; to wit:
“Chiliad has already solved two very challenging problems. The first is the ability to rapidly search data collections at greater scale than any other offering in the market. The second is to allow search formulation and analysis in natural language. This means that no longer is an elite class of analysts required in order to generate meaningful results, thus reducing the personnel training and skills shortages that plague alternative solutions and put timely discovery at risk. The explosion of ‘Big Data’ is real and valuable findings are buried in vast collections for both enterprises and governments. Chiliad has the opportunity to integrate its innovative, massively scalable solutions with emerging open source software to build customized solutions for the largest-scale clients.”
Businessweek described the company in this way:
Chiliad, Inc. provides data analysis solutions for various clouds, agencies, departments, and other stovepipes. The company offers Discovery/Alert, a platform that enables investigators, business analysts, and knowledge workers to securely reach, find, analyze, and continuously stay on top of big data—whether structured or unstructured, and classified or unclassified. Its software solutions include Iterative Discovery cycle that allows analysts and researchers to reach various content silos, find what matters, analyze it to find meaning from the information relationships presented and continuously monitor changes; and Architecture, a virtual consolidated data center that enables multidimensional analysis and ranking. It serves government/intelligence, law enforcement, healthcare, pharmaceutical, insurance, and other markets. Chiliad, Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia.
I have highlighted the buzzwords that were designed to generate sales leads and revenue. I can only assume that the verbiage and the Attensity management touch fell short of the mark. How many of the “analytics” and “business intelligence” companies will follow Chiliad’s path? Good question but I keep asking it.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2014
Enterprise Search: The Quest for a Big Red Button
October 9, 2014
I just returned after three days at a content processing conference. This was not one of the search engine optimization or vendor rah rah shows for search and business intelligence. Nevertheless, several presentations and numerous participants voiced a need for a “big red button.”
I think search and content processing vendors may want to spend a few minutes thinking about this metaphor.
So what’s a big red button? The idea among the law enforcement and intelligence professionals at this conference in the suburbs of Washington, DC embrace an office supply vendor advertising campaign. The ad made the point that ordering from the vendor was as easy as pressing a big red button labeled “Easy.”
How does an ad for ink jet cartridges and pencils relate to six and seven figure enterprise search and content processing systems?
Easy, of course.
At this conference, the attendees and a number of speakers talked about the need to simplify findability, tracking, and analysis systems. The fancy visualizations, the ability to store massive amounts of data in a secure cloud, and the appetite among investigators for data is rising.
The usability of the systems is either choked by work cycles that do not produce useful outputs, held back by a shortage of specialists who can operate these systems, or weighted down with bells and whistles that get in the way of some essential functions.
Enterprise search, analysis systems, and intelligence systems were described as one exhibitor as “the major barrier to sales.” One of the speakers from an investigative unit groused, “Once set up, my team has a very difficult time making changes to get the outputs in line with our operational needs.”
A recent study by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) reported that “more than half of the organizations surveyed show little maturity in their approach to search, with no strategy, no allocated budget and no identified owner.”
How can vendors deliver solutions when the customers exhibit indifference to useful technology? How can the technology deliver results to the user so that more informed decisions can be made?
These are important questions that cannot be answered by references to low cost search options, buzzwords, and bootlegging fixes so a single user or a small unit can access digital information.
Several observations are warranted:
First, the sales cycle is becoming longer for many vendors, not just those at the intelligence trade show I attended. Digital solutions are procured in a way that defers a decision. None of the individuals involved wants to make a choice that will lead to pushback from users or scrutiny from the accounting department.
Second, the users get tangled in complex systems. When new systems are explored, the users want simplicity and the vendors deliver complexity. The “failure to communicate” adds bureaucratic friction and in some cases flare ups among vendors, decision makers, and technical staff reviewing a solution.
Third, the benefits of a system or an incumbent system are often very difficult if not impossible to demonstrate. Without concrete data about cost/benefit or crimes solved or good decisions/bad decision ratios—search and content processing has a credibility problem.
The big red button is a powerful metaphor that suggests a pivotal moment in digital information access has arrived. Without a big red button, search and content processing may face even stronger headwinds going forward.
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2014
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