Gleanster Report Gathers Best Practices in Agile BI
November 19, 2012
There are some new signposts along the road to getting the most return on business intelligence investments. The San Francisco Chronicle shares the post, “New Gleanster Research Reveals Best Practices in Agile Business Intelligence.” The research firm recently released a 38-page report which examines practices at 367 companies. The press release tells us:
“For major corporations, Agile BI tools can supplement their core BI initiatives, providing a friendlier front end that builds on existing investments. For smaller organizations, these tools may be the only ones they need.
“This Gleansight benchmark report examines how Top Performers are utilizing Agile BI to lower the barriers to better use of data. It looks at the technologies, organizational resources and performance metrics they have implemented and how they are achieving success in wiping away at least some of the challenges associated with effective business intelligence.”
The report is available here, but registration, and an agreement to receive marketing contact from third parties, is required. It might be worth the bother; the topics covered include the following: Reasons to Implement, Value Drivers, Challenges, Performance Metrics, Success Stories, and, last but not least, the Vendor Landscape. Vendor rankings, by the way, are based on feedback from industry practitioners, not from analysts.
Business tech information firm Gleanster keeps busy publishing white papers, case studies, and research reports from a variety of sources. They gather best practices and vendor information in order to give their clients an edge. The company is headquartered in Evanston, IL.
Cynthia Murrell, October 19, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary: November 9 to November 15
November 19, 2012
This week, the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some important information regarding the state of big data and its impact on some of the world’s most up and coming industries.
“The Ethics of Big Data” examines the possible ethical quandries that develop from big data analysis. However, despite the potential ethical challenges that face the industry in the end the pros, outweigh the cons.
The article states:
“Yet it cuts both ways: Consumers also can take advantage of the democratizing effects of big data. In fact, there’s an app for that: RateDriverenables users to quickly determine the appropriate rate they should expect to pay for attorney’s fees in 51 U.S. markets.
Big data holds promise to improve the legal profession and the quality of service that we deliver to clients, says Carolyn Elefant, a Washington, D.C., attorney and technology evangelist. “Significantly, big data would inject a strong dose of transparency into lawyer marketing and assist consumers in hiring lawyers. How so? Because big data can be used to show the likelihood of winning a case and the true cost.”
An article that shows the way that big data is transforming the healthcare industry is, “Big Data is the New Anti-Virus.” However, it looks at it from the angle of computer health and how to better detect viruses.
The article states:
“With Seculert Sense, customers can now upload log files using a Secure FTPS tunnel, or upstream logs through Syslog directly from a secure web gateway or web proxy devices, or log aggregation solution for real-time detection and forensics investigation. Built on Amazon Elastic MapReduce, Seculert Sense launches a “big data analysis cloud” that rapidly analyzes an organization’s vast amount of log data, going back months or even years and comparing it against the thousands of unique malware samples collected by Seculert. Over time, Seculert Sense continues to digest huge amounts of data in order to identify persistent attacks that are going undetected by next generation IPs, Anti-Bot and Secure Web Gateways.”
Big data analytics is not only taking off in America, it is becoming a world-wide phenomenon. “Asian Analytics on the Verge of a Boom” describes the potential for big data analytics success in Asia.
According to the article,
“Two different consumer analytics platforms from Singapore Management University (SMU) and StarHub respectively aim to provide insights into consumer behavior, so companies can develop and tailor initiatives that will be more relevant to and better received by customers.
Rajesh Balan, director of LiveLabs Urban Lifestyle Innovation Platform at SMU, said the platform will enable organizations to utilize real-time insights, helping their campaigns go to market and assess the outcome faster. On the consumer end, it will turn what most users perceive as intrusive spam messages on their phones into something useful.”
It does not matter what country you live in or what industry you work in. Big Data analytics technology is becoming too important to overlook. Digital Reasoning has been using automated understanding of big data for nearly a decade.
Jasmine Ashton, November 19, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Technology Captures and Disseminates Information in Real Time
November 16, 2012
The uncertain economic times have evolved into a new paradigm, thanks to big data and the advent of business intelligence software. Business Finance discusses how many companies have been able to turn uncertainty into insights and opportunities. The article, “How Business Intelligence Software Solves Top Financial Challenges” explains that the three of the biggest barriers to handling big data are complexity, high costs, and the need for real-time insight.
The core of the article’s idea is summarized in it’s closing:
Some of the key trends driving next-generation solutions include visual displays for easier consumption of data as well as in-memory and mobile technologies that are changing the speed of data delivery as well as accessibility. BI success isn’t just about having a lot of data. Making the right information available to the right people at the right time is critical.
The ultimate realization for companies today is that insights and important information is not possible without the right enterprise software solutions. Innovations from PolySpot such as their Information At Work software delivers vital information to all users in the enterprise. From lower-level executives to the CFO, ideas will be captured and disseminated in near real-time.
Megan Feil, November 16, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Disruptive Software Solutions Aim to Increase Productivity
November 15, 2012
Ben Werther became head of the products division when EMC bought Greenplum in 2010, which Forbes asserts as the first step in founding Platfora. This company plans on disrupting the traditional warehousing and business intelligence and is the subject of the recent article, “Platfora Raises $20 Million To Get Real with Big Data.” The main collateral Platfora has is it’s usage of Hadoop.
Platfora is still in the early phases; there are ten beta customers and more than 70 that are waiting.
The article describes how Platfora increases the value of Hadoop:
Hadoop is not easy to work with. Keep in mind that it’s been mostly the domain of data scientists at companies like Yahoo! and Facebook. But with Platfora, it’s now possible for any company to get tangible business value from Big Data. This is through common sense queries and helpful visualizations. Pulling this off has taken about a year and intense engineering. ‘I’ve never seen better execution from a team,’ said Scott Weiss, who is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
There are a multitude of companies that have presented the business intelligence market with potentially disruptive technologies. PolySpot software solutions fit that bill, but more importantly they help deliver information across the enterprise. Increasing productivity is why these technologies matter after all.
Megan Feil, November 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Inxight Moving to EC Wise
November 13, 2012
If true, this is an interesting development. The site Dvd to Ipad Converter Reviews announces the acquisition of data-management-developer resource Inxight Software by enterprise software company EC Wise in “BO M & Inxight Software.” The headline’s a little confusing; whither “business objects” in text mining we wonder?
The brief write up states:
“EC Wise said the company plans to Inxight’s unstructured information that companies added to the EC Wise business intelligence products to help customers take full advantage of all the data to make the right decisions. . . . EC Wise said, Inxight’s text analytics, federated search and visualization applications, will become part of EC Wise XI platform.”
Unfortunately, we have zero information about the value of this deal, which is expected to be completed in July.
The piece also gives us this observation:
“The acquisition reflects the consolidation trend in the software industry. Last Tuesday, the German software company AG said the United States have been given approval to $ 546,000,000 of its acquisition of webMethods.(AG is a building SOA-based software vendor), last week, Microsoft also announced that six billion U.S. dollars acquisition of online advertising company aQuantive.Earlier this month, Oracle acquired the company to 495 million Agile Software Corporation.”
EC Wise U.S. is based in San Rafael, California, while EC Wise Sichuan makes its home in Chengdu, China. The company focuses on business intelligence, big data, business process optimization/ automation, and, interestingly, gaming and entertainment.
Inxight Software‘s impressive customer roster includes Morgan Stanley and Yahoo. It emerged in 1997 from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The company has changed hands a couple of times already, having been bought by Business Objects in 2007, which was in turn absorbed by SAP in 2008. Let’s hope the company finds a happy home at EC Wise.
Cynthia Murrell, November 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary: November 2 to November 8
November 12, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some excellent article summaries regarding big data’s growing impact on the globalized workplace.
“Big Data Talent Pool Grows” explains how job seekers are embracing the big data analytics profession due to the fact that it welcomes new talent.
The article states:
“The just-released InformationWeek 2012 State of IT Staffing Survey reveals that 40% of those who cite big data and analytics as a top hiring priority say they’ll increase staffing in these areas by 11% or more during the next two years. At the same time, 53% of these companies say it will be hard to find big-data-savvy analytics experts. Respondents expect to try a mix of retraining of existing people, hiring of new employees and contracting of consultants and temporary employees to fill the gap.
Practitioners, vendors, and educators we spoke to for our Big Data IT Staffing report offer seven tips for finding the right talent.”
The article, “The Healthcare Analytics Trickle Down” shows how the pairing of healthcare and data analytics is starting to pay off for many companies and its starting to trickle down.
The article states:
“If you’re old enough to remember the Reagan administration, you remember the politically charged expression “trickle-down economics,” which referred to the theory that if you provide benefits and incentives to businesses and the wealthy, those benefits would trickle down to wage earners at lower socioeconomic levels.
In some ways, big data analytics is like trickle-down economics. Only the biggest healthcare providers with the deepest pockets can afford the kind of analytics platforms required to get useful intelligence from tens of thousands of patient records. But in theory, those benefits will trickle down to smaller providers that either don’t have the financial support or the large patient populations to do this type of data crunching on their own.”
We all knew that big data was something worth investing in, but save the world? that seems to be a little bit much. “50 Ways Big Data Can Save the World” showcases the new startup Bidgely, which aims to turn every appliance in your home into a data scientist, providing you with real time results on your energy usage.
The article states:
“Utilities worldwide are installing smart meters on homes and businesses, which means there could be as much as 50 terabytes of energy data that can emerge from a million or so homes in a year. The problem has been that there haven’t been very many ways to make good use of all this data to benefit the average consumer. But a startup called Bidgely, which raised a series A round from Khosla Ventures, says it has created algorithms that can dig into real-time smart meter energy-consumption data, can reduce consumers’ home energy use by between 4 percent to 12 percent, and can also deliver other beneficial home services to consumers.”
Whether you are looking to utilize big data to protect the environment, save lives, or boost business for your company, there are solutions available that can be very beneficial. Thanks to companies like Digital Reasoning, this technology is more affordable, accessible and customizable than ever.
Jasmine Ashton, November 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
PolySpot Delivers Insights and Information From Raw Data
November 7, 2012
Media sources often plow through updates giving detailed accounts of the who, what, why, when and where for newsworthy events and developments, but it is quite refreshing when a source takes a step back and reflects upon the larger context. We give credit to GigaOM for taking that direction with their recent article, “5 Trends That Are Changing How We Do Big Data.”
The democratization of the study of data science ranks as one of the top updates in this arena. The article mentions the likes of Udacity and Coursera; these offer online courses related to big data. Apache Hadoop version 2.0 made a big splash too and now there is more to the software than just MapReduce jobs.
The article shares more information on the technical improvements big data has spurred:
One of these approaches is making big data accessible to developers, which is where startups such as Continuuity, Infochimps and even Precog (a big data BI engine, by nature) come into play. They make it relatively easy for developers to create applications that tie at least some functions into a big data backend, sometimes via a process as simple as writing a script or generating a piece of code that programmers can insert directly into their application’s code.
Apps for churning out big data insights will remain high on many companies’ wish lists. We imagine that companies like PolySpot will see quite the spike in demand for their offerings as businesses also wrap their minds around the larger picture of possibilities with big data.
Megan Feil, November 7, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
IntelTrax Summary: October 26 to November 1
November 5, 2012
The IntelTrax information intelligence blog posted some excellent articles this week discussing the importance of investing in data analysis technology to help improve the efficiency of workplaces.
“Big Data a Big Part of IT Spending” looks at some projections regarding the rate of IT spending growth, most of which went towards social media campaign spending. However, the spending is continuing to branch out as more and more industries are beginning to utilize the technology.
The article states:
“Big data this year will account for US$28 billion of IT spending worldwide, which will increase to US$34 billion in 2013, according to Gartner.
In a report released Wednesday, the market research firm said much of 2012 expenditure will be in adapting traditional tools to address issues related to the big data phenomenon such as machine data, social data, and the large variety and velocity of data. In contrast, only US$4.3 billion will be focused on new big data functionalities.”
As big data analytics becomes more mainstream, we are seeing more interesting ways that it is being utilized. “Big Data Justice League” examines the use of big data analytics to predict the criminal behavior of maritime pirates.
The article states:
“There are almost too many sources of unstructured data to grapple with: interviews with pirates in custody, news stories about piracy incidents, data from mobile phones found during investigations, e-mail traffic, and social media posts from the pirates themselves. And here’s where the story gets really interesting, in my opinion. Most of this data comes from disparate sources that can vex the best investigations. It’s not simply a matter of easily formatted spreadsheets with clean rows and columns. At warp speed, data comes in from the Web, mobile devices, PDF files and other documents — a potential treasure trove of hidden insights.”
Some companies that a new to the big data game take a little bit of time to see the return on their investment. “Data Scientists More Important Than Most Think” gives four major detractors to analytics success:
“1. 35% of the time, it is the missing analytics skills – For analysts – how well are they able to bridge the gap to business, to understand the real question behind the ask before they jump into the data pull? For PM’s and marketing managers – how well do they understand the recipe behind making decisions based on data (BADIR framework), how well familiar they are with the fundamental analytics technique?
2. 10% of the time, it is the missing decision making process – How does budget get allocated? What is the process of laying out product roadmap?
3. 25% of the time, it is the organization’s data maturity – how easy is to get to data, how many version of the truth exist, does data exist in its rawest form for everybody to aggregate as they please?
4. 30% of the time, it the management and leadership – how is the management making decision, how are they establishing roles and responsibility, how are they holding people accountable?”
Regardless of your industry or expertise in the data analysis field, Digital Reasoning can be of great help. It offers one of the best analytics platforms on the market and can get your house in order by using automated understanding for big data.
Jasmine Ashton, November 5, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
The Data Analytics Steamroller
November 2, 2012
IT professionals may soon find themselves very, very busy, according to Datamation’s “Data Analytics: Advanced Roll-Out is Accelerating.” The article reports on a new survey from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, which found demand for advanced analytics tools in finance, marketing, and operations departments poised to rise dramatically over the next few years. With the adoption of more advanced tools should come an increased demand for serious IT chops. The article reports:
“IT pros in the BI/analytics world can thank our old friend unstructured data. Incorporating emails, text messages, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, Word docs and other unstructured information into a data warehouse already populated with rows and columns of production, sales and personnel information has been a wish list item for almost a decade.
“And it’s extremely difficult to do – spreadsheet jockeys who are wizards at nested formulas and linking Excel to DB2 or Oracle 8 aren’t ready to deal with the wide variety of data types that marketing, customer service and other departments need to examine.”
The shift even has some organizations, like Procter & Gamble for instance, breaking up their IT departments and dispersing their analytics experts among other departments. Writer Larry Marion observes that “IT pros will be pushed and pulled as the organizational disputes drag on.” They can take comfort, though, in their enhanced job security. Still an extremely valuable commodity.
Cynthia Murrell, November 02, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Infrastructure from PolySpot Offers Secure Information Delivery Across the Enterprise
November 1, 2012
With the amount of attention on big data, any software solution vendor is likely to rise up and present their fancy marketing language for enterprise infrastructure as the one and only kind of software that can tackle the challenge big data poses. Well, ZDNet speaks only the language of pure and simple truth in their article “Big Data: Why It’s Really an Architecture Challenge.”
Business intelligence and data warehousing may be two common aspects of the larger system for extracting insights from big data, but data warehouses were not designed for the volume of integration and access required and neither were business-intelligence systems.
The article opens by pointing directly to infrastructure as the key component:
What’s missing from all the conversations about big data is a focus on the infrastructure necessary to support it — and in particular its use in real time. For many companies, big data means opening up access to the data warehouses they have always maintained. Data warehousing has been and continues to be a critical component of enterprise-class organisations. Such systems provide the aggregation of data from across the organisation and enable it to be sliced and diced into consumable chunks allowing business analysts to provide insights into business conditions.
Infrastructure is what delivers information across the enterprise, allowing the true dissemination of insights to occur. More often than not, companies allow the magnitude of little data bits to distract from the larger ideas that evolve from the sum of the parts – but not PolySpot.
Megan Feil, November 1, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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