Business Intelligence: A Functional Barrier
January 26, 2014
Walls.
I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees. (Robert Frost, Mending Wall)
A reader sent me a link to an item that appeared in Phi Beta Iota. You can find the graphic at http://bit.ly/1d3H3Q4. The original document appeared on 2010 at http://bit.ly/1fnOB2Y. I thought again of walls.
In late 2014, O1Business published a short item that provides more back up for the apparent slow down in some business intelligence markets. You can find that original article at http://bit.ly/1aAgA27. My take on the 01Business story by Marie Jung appeared in December 2013 at http://bit.ly/19VUqH9.
I don’t have a dog in the fight, a cranky neighbor, or a ground swell. There is a LinkedIn thread that contains an assertion that search and content processing are heading toward a cornucopia of sales, revenue, and bliss.
Several observations:
- IBM, despite its $1 billion bet on Watson, essentially a business intelligence system, is struggling to hit its financial targets. IBM, however, is confident that it will make Watson into a multi-billion dollar a year business and much more quickly than Autonomy labored to get close to $1 billion in revenue.
- HP Autonomy is motivated to generate a return on its purchase of IDOL, the Digital Reasoning Engine, and other meaning-based computing technology.
- Palantir, Recorded Future, and other cutting-edge intelligence software vendors are working very hard to generate a return for their stakeholders.
- Incumbents like SAP Business Objects, Oracle, and SAS are ramping up their marketing activities.
Promising companies may find themselves out-gunned in terms of industry clout and marketing revenue. Are we entering a time when there are too few customers and too many purveyors.
So what?
I think the future of consultants and financial professionals who are brokering deals for companies in the business intelligence or “intelligence” sector may be able to sell their consulting and advisory services.
However, I am not confident that most of the companies with software in this “business intelligence” category can generate robust organic growth. Furthermore, I am somewhat skeptical that the claims of vendors making the rounds on the conference circuit can provide hard facts that provide cash-strapped, somewhat cautious prospects that “value” will result from certain types of smart software.
As the diagram prepared by Stephen Few makes clear there is a barrier in business intelligence. The problem in France may be an early warning that the economic malaise exists. Like the passengers on a cruise ship with a mysterious disease, there is not much those affected can do. The vessel has to return to port, disinfect, and start over.
I anticipate considerable acrobatics from business intelligence vendors as they labor to generate organic revenues, differentiate themselves from a legion of me-too providers, and return a payout to their stakeholders.
The recent news assertions that fancy data analysis does not deliver results. I saw one report that used the word “useless.” See http://bit.ly/1n1HjHN)
Strong words, which—obviously—may be incorrect.
Stephen E Arnold, January 26, 2014
The Future of Business Intelligence
January 26, 2014
In the article titled Business Intelligence Usage Evolving Subtly on Smart Data Collective it is made apparent that new developments in business intelligence and analytics are still growing. The article assumes that the 2013 trend in cloud computing popularity will continue into 2014.
Looking further ahead, the article states:
“There could soon be a whole new BI paradigm, in which many affordable analysis processes are created at once, rather than devoting the whole budget to one effort. Enterprise Apps Today explained that this is another natural role for the cloud, with good projects surviving and poor options falling by the wayside, all without the effort or funding that would be necessary to accomplish the same on-site.”
The article cites a MarketsandMarkets survey that concluded that BI would be found useful in many sectors. More specifically, “the source indicated that the technology will grow at a rate of 8.3 percent through 2018.” That would mean a value of $20.8 billion in 2018, up from the current worth of $13.9 billion. However, others are less optimistic, believing the slow evolution of business intelligence may be too snail-like, since business intelligence is currently meeting sales resistance in France, as we reported in the article Business Intelligence: Free Pressure for Fee Solutions. Perhaps subtle is not enough?
Chelsea Kerwin, January 26, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Connexica Heads to South Africa
January 10, 2014
Traveling around the Cape of Good Hope can be tricky business, but Connexica, a software company based in Staffordshire, England, plans on opening an office in South Africa. According to Midlands Business News in the article, “Staffordshire Based Connexica Expand Into South Africa” the business move is the result of a strategic partnership with Allard Verster Group.
Allard Verster Group specializes in business consulting and solutions and the partnership between the two companies will give Allard the ability to sell Connexica’s Business Analytics Software CXAIR in South Africa. CXAIR gives its users high-speed access to data with interactive diagrams.
Allard Verster Group already has an established client base in several sectors, including mining, manufacturing, healthcare, insurance, and local government. The partnership will allow Connexica to reach a new range of clientele. Both companies are excited about the venture and the new opportunities it presents:
“Head of Business Development Greg Richards says of the agreement ‘We are delighted to announce this partnership with the Allard Verster Group and I am particularly excited about CXAIR moving into a new territory and see real opportunity for CXAIR within the South African and wider African market.’
Craig Verster, Executive Director at Allard Verster Group commented: ‘Our partnership with Connexica significantly enhances our ability to deliver powerful search, business Intelligence and data analysis’ productivity solutions and services to business users. It validates our strategy to co-innovate with our partners to deliver measurable value to our clients.’ ”
Good news for Connexica and Allard Verster Group. Strategic partnerships are one of the best ways to drum up new business as well as expand a product’s market reach.
Whitney Grace, January 10, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Shopping For Business Intelligence
January 5, 2014
There is not an Amazon equivalent for organizations in the market for business intelligence tools. They must rely on conducting their own research to find the best tool to suit their needs. Why has not one of the world’s IT experts taken the time to aggregate all BI reviews, software specifications, and other relevant information into one source? Oh, wait, someone did! Software Advice is a Web site where people can read about business intelligence software and select the proper tool for their organization. In the article, “Compare Business Intelligence (BI) Software Tools” there is a rundown of the top ten most recommended business intelligent systems along with an explanation about how there is a growing need for BI software to analyze data and give a user friendly interface.
There are three main ways BI software is used: data management, data discovery, and reporting tools. What and how the organization wants to use the data shapes the type of the software they need to buy. Another consideration is to figure out what type of buyer you are:
“Business users and departmental buyers. This group of buyers favors small data discovery vendors and BI tools over the big traditional BI systems. Ease-of-use and fast deployment are more important than in-depth functionality and integration. They are usually business users rather than IT staff.
IT buyers. Traditional buyers are more focused on functionality and integration within their information infrastructure stacks or other enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Integration across different entities and departments is usually more important than ease of use.”
Then there are the current marketing trends. These shift from year to year, but the ones on people’s radar are: mobile BI applications, SaaS, business users outnumbering IT staff, big data, and in-memory processing.
Software Advice offers consultation services to organizations in the market for a BI solution. As of writing this article, they have helped 159,561 companies in eight years. The initial consult is free as is the general information, but there are going to be fees somewhere. Software Advice selling technique is analogous to a personal shopper.
Whitney Grace, January 05, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
DataSift Announces Trainable VEDO Processing Engine
December 30, 2013
The folks over at DataSift dropped us a line announcing the release of their next-generation processing engine, VEDO. The company’s founder and CEO Nick Halstead writes about the product at the company’s blog in, “DataSift VEDO: Programmable Intelligence.” The central idea, they told us, is to apply context and capture value from social data with less manual processing than before. That is a welcome advance. We wonder: can Datasift match Topsy’s spectacular deal with Apple?
Halstead relates:
“So today we are announcing VEDO – an extension of our core platform that brings programmable intelligence to the masses. Building upon our incredibly rich text pre-processing and parsing capabilities, we have added a whole new engine that allows customers to take advantage of advances in machine learning, statistical models, rich taxonomies and much more all through a simple and unified approach. As with the rest of our platform, we want to reduce the cost of developing this kind of functionality for our customers and let them focus on innovation and not on infrastructure.
VEDO brings the power to understand the context and the meaning of the content itself. It can be trained to understand any subject and to contextualize it so that the data can be inherently joined to other structured data within the business.”
Halstead goes on to advise that this connection between social data and other business data is the key to realizing value from investments in social-media data. A DataSift representative explained that three new components, programmable user rules, machine learning, and a library of pre-built classifiers, have been added to the processing engine. These features let users tailor VEDO to automatically categorize, interpret, and deliver social data in the ways most useful to their companies.
DataSift is holding a webinar on VEDO on January 9th; see here for details. True to its roots as an offshoot of the now-defunct TweetMeme, the company envisions a day when all organizations employ social-media data to inform their business decisions. Founded in 2010, DataSift has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Reading, U.K.
Cynthia Murrell, December 30, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Attivio is Synonymous with Partnership
December 21, 2013
If you need a business intelligence solution, apparently Attivio is the one stop shop to go. Attivio has formed two strategic partnerships. The Providence Journal announced that “Actian And Attivio OEM Agreement Accelerates Big Data Business Value By Integrating Big Content.” Actian, a big data analytics company, has an OEM agreement with Attivio to use its Active Intelligence Engine (AIE) to ramp their data analytics solution. AIE completes Actian’s goal to deliver analytics on all types of data from social media to surveys to research documents.
The article states:
” ‘Big Content has become a vital piece in the Big Data puzzle,’ said David Schubmehl, Research Director, IDC. ‘The majority of enterprise information created today is human-generated, but legacy systems have traditionally required processing structured data and unstructured content separately. The addition of Attivio AIE to Actian ParAccel provides an extremely cost-effective option that delivers impressive performance and value.’ “
Panorama announced on its official Web site that, “Panorama And Attivio Announce BI Technology Alliance Partnership.” The AIE will be combined with Panorama’s software to improve the business value of content and big data. Panorama’s BI solution will use the AIE to streamline enterprise decision-making processes by eliminating the need to switch between applications to access data. This will speed up business productivity and improve data access.
The article explains:
“ ‘One of the goals of collaborative BI is to connect data, insights and people within the organization,’ said Sid Probstein, CTO at Attivio. ‘The partnership with Panorama achieves this because it gives customers seamless and intuitive discovery of information from sources as varied as corporate BI to semi-structured data and unstructured content.’”
Attivio is a tool used to improve big data projects to enhance usage of data. The company’s strategy to be a base for other solutions to be built on is similar to what Fulcrum Technologies did in 1985.
Whitney Grace, December 21, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Business Intelligence: Free Pressures For Fee Solutions
December 14, 2013
I read “KB Crawl sort la tête de l’eau,” published by 01Business. The hook for the article is that KB Crawl, a company harvesting Internet content for business intelligence analyses, has emerged from bankruptcy. Good news for KB Crawl, whose parent company is reported to be KB Intelligence.
The write up contained related interesting information.
First, the article points out that business intelligence services like KB Crawl are perceived as costs, not revenue producers. If this is accurate, the same problem may be holding back once promising US vendors like Digital Reasoning and Ikanow, among others.
Second, the article seems to suggest that for fee business intelligence services are in direct competition with free services like Google. Although Google’s focus on ads continues to have an impact on the relevance of the Google results, users may be comfortable with information provided by free services. Will the same preference for free impact the US business intelligence sector?
Third, the article identifies a vendor (Ixxo) as facing some financial headwinds, writing:
D’autres éditeurs du secteur connaissent des difficultés, comme Ixxo, éditeur de la solution Squido.
But the most useful information in the story is the list of companies that compete with KB Crawl. Some of the firms are:
- AMI Software. www.amisw.com. This company has roots in enterprise search and touts 1500 customers
- Data Observer. www.data-observer.com. The company is a tie up between Asapspot and Data-Deliver. The firm offers “an all-encompassing Internet monitoring and e-reputation services company.”
- Digimind. www.digimind.com. The firm makes sense of social media.
- Eplica. A possible reference to a San Diego employment services firm.
- iScop. Unknown.
- Ixxo. www.ixxo.fr. The firm “develops innovative software applications to boost business responsiveness when faced with unstructured data.”
- Pikko. www.pikko-software.com. A visualization company.
- Qwam. www.qwamci.com. Another “content intelligence” company.
- SindUp. www.sindup.fr. The company offers a monitoring platform for strategic and e reputation information.
- Spotter. www.spotter.com. A company that provides the “power to understand.”
- Synthesio. www.synthesio.com. The company says, “We help brands and agencies find valuable social insights to drive real business value.”
- TrendyBuzz. www.trendybuzz.com. The company lets a client measure “Internet visibility units.”
My view is that 01Busienss may be identifying a fundamental problem in the for fee business intelligence, open source harvesting, and competitive intelligence sector.
Information about business and competitive intelligence that I see in my TRAX Overflight service is mostly of the “power of positive thinking” variety. Companies like Palantir capture attention because the firms are able to raise astounding amounts of funding. Less visible are the financial pressures on the companies trying to generate revenue with systems aimed at commercial enterprises.
If the 01Business article is on the money, what US vendors are like to have their heads under water in 2014? Use the comments section of this blog to identify the stragglers in the North American market.
Stephen E Arnold, December 14, 2013
Self Service Mashups Arrived For Endeca
December 10, 2013
Oracle is in the business of acquisitions and upgrades lately. They are ramping up the headlines before 2014 and Rittman Mead Consulting reports that “Oracle Endeca Information Discovery 3.1 And Self-Service Data Mashup Capability.” The new Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID) 3.1 moves Oracle toward providing its clients with better self-service discovery capabilities.
The article states:
“OEID 3.1 now enables its non-technical users to securely run agile business intelligence analysis on variety of data sources in much easier way and without need to IT. On the other hand the integration with Oracle Business Intelligence is now even more tight to the extend that Oracle announced OEID 3.1 as ‘the only complete data discovery platform for the enterprise.’ The product data sheet is accessible here and in the same way as older versions of OEID, this software is downloadable via Oracle e-Delivery website which is the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud where you can find downloads for all licensed Oracle products.”
The new version allows users to join data sources together, such as files, databases, and pre-built Endeca servers. Files no longer have to be solely in Excel format and the added geocode features allow users to map data. Users will not have to rely on IT to deliver enrichment for unstructured data, because there is a new option to find hidden entities, sentiment, and more. Managing data is easer with the application settings.
Oracle OEID 3.1 empowers the average user to become a data expert. The user-friendly UI and upgraded features are the software’s biggest selling features.
Whitney Grace, December 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Yellowfin and Its Business Intelligence Spin
December 7, 2013
I read “Yellowfin Launches Yellowfin 7 Analytics Platform: Makes Enterprise-Wide Data Discovery Easy.” The company’s Web site asserts that Yellowfin is Ranked #1. The page explains that “global BI vendor surveys” attest to this stature. (Please, note that the company’s url is www.yellowfinbi.com, not www.yellowfin.com. The “yellowfin.com” name resolves to a previously owned boat vendor.)
The three reasons for Yellowfin’s stature, according to the company’s Web site, are:
- Ranked number 1 compared to world’s foremost BI vendors. I did not see any links to the referenced studies but I am tired from shoveling snow.
- Standout vendor in emerging, dashboard and innovation categories. I did not see how many other categories were used to rank innovative business intelligence vendors. The snow was heavy and wet. Tough to cut through.
- Challenging traditional BI vendors. I did not see any specifics about how Yellowfin is tackling IBM SPSS, SAS, Recorded Future, Palantir, or Talend, but my fatigue may be contributing to this oversight on my part.
The news I received via email quotes Glen Rabie, Yellowfin CEO, who says:
Yellowfin 7 “delivered beautiful, balanced and brilliant analytics software that makes stunningly simple enterprise-wide Data Discovery easy.”
I like “beautiful,” “brilliant,” and “stunningly simple” analytics. I assume the software alerts the user when the data are corrupted or the analytic method and the information fed into the numerical recipe are mismatched. In my experience, fiddling with numbers and different mathematical procedures can produce some interesting results.
Mr. Rabie continues:
You’ve heard people talk-up self-service BI because of its ability to circumvent the IT bottleneck. With Yellowfin 7, we’ve stepped it up again. We’ve completely redesigned and rebuilt the report authoring process, from the ground up, to enable independent Data Discovery….Yellowfin 7’s new interface for analysis lets you instantly understand the impact of your data selections on the content you’re creating, empowering users to achieve deeper understanding in less time and build the most insightful BI content possible – every time.
The company offers interactive dashboards, collaboration tools, mobile access, and exception reporting. Yellowfin is a “complete BI platform.” Based on the information in the news I received, Yellowfin seems to have overhauled its system rolled out a decade ago.
One observation: The tone and word choice used to describe what looks like an interesting product.
Stephen E Arnold, December 7, 2013
Business Intelligence For The Excel User
December 6, 2013
Microsoft Office Suite might not the same heavy-lifting data discovery solutions as specially designed software, but Database Journal reports in the article “Getting Started With Microsoft Power Query For Excel” that an equivalent solution is available. Power Query is a Microsoft Power BI Excel add-in that provides data discovery, data reshaping, and data combination from multiple sources. Power Query’s user interface is both interactive and intuitive and can be used for a variety of basic yet powerful functions: search, discover, acquire, combine, refine, transform and enrich the data.
The article explains how to download Power Query and covers elementary procedures to program it to your specific needs:
“Power Query (code name for this feature was “Data Explorer”) is a free Excel add-in (supported both in Excel 2010 and Excel 2013) which can be installed from the ‘Download Microsoft Power Query for Excel page. To install the Power Query add-in, you require Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus, Office 365 ProPlus, Excel 2013 Standalone or Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus with Software Assurance. You can find more information on this under the Software Requirements section of Microsoft Power Query for Excel.”
In a way, Power Query is a mini-big data machine in Excel. Microsoft may want to trademark that idea. Excel is the basis for most data storage and collection in organizations. Viable business intelligence solutions usually do not come this cheap and it is worth investigating to make use of data sitting on a server.
Whitney Grace, December 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
