PolySpot Asserts Impressive and Innovative Tools into the Big Data Mix
October 31, 2012
Big data is only as big and exciting as the business intelligence platforms available to transform raw data bits into enriched insights. GigaOM reported on a new player in this field in the article,”Platfora Shows a Whole New Way to do Business Intelligence on Big Data.” Show, not tell, is definitely applicable to Platfora. Data is presented visually in graphs to data scientists and analysts.
Platfora uses Hadoop as a scalable data store from which users can grab data sets and choose which variables are shown and how different data sets relate to each other. Platfora has named this data-management process building a “lens.”
The article discusses thoughts from Platfora Founder and CEO Ben Werther:
Essentially, Werther said, Platfora has turned Hadoop into a sub-second interactive engine that operates much faster than any Hadoop-to-data-warehouse connector or Hive-based approach could ever hope to do. (Hive is the SQL-like query language developed for Hadoop that companies such as Facebook use to turn Hadoop into a data warehouse for unstructured data.) ‘At the point where you can synthesize on the fly,’ he said, ‘[legacy BI tools] start to look like relics of another age.’
Data visualization is certainly an exciting piece in the puzzle, but it is by no means a new way to perform business intelligence. We have seen far more impressive and innovative tools with mobile capabilities to store and analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data from companies like PolySpot.
Megan Feil, October 31, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary: October 19 to October 25
October 29, 2012
This week, the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog published some interesting stories related to big data’s influence over modern enterprises and higher education.
The article “Text Mining Brings Out the Value on Big Data” explains how companies are turning data volumes into increased profits. Many companies are choosing to automate the process through data analytics and text mining software.
The article states:
“Many companies haven’t begun to benefit from valuable enterprise text data,” said Fiona McNeill, Global Product Marketing Manager for SAS Text Analytics. “Most know that information in-house and in social media must be analyzed to bring value. SAS Text Analytics are being used for patient safety in healthcare, digital content performance in the media industry, early-warning systems and citizen intelligence in government and more. Nobody delivers the depth and breadth of technology for analyzing structured and unstructured data that SAS does.”
“Higher Ed for Big Data” reports on new programs meant to reinvigorate the tech work force and bring young talent to the industry.
According to the write-up:
“Colleges and universities are moving swiftly to create advanced degree programs to help meet what’s expected to be rapidly rising demand among employers for specialists who can manage and analyze big data.
The schools are likely aware of a McKinsey report warning of a mega-shortage of analytical experts that could leave as many as 190,000 positions unfilled by 2018. They’re also responding to appeals from big employers like IBM and SAS Institute that have been lobbying college administrators to set up such programs.
Schools have offered analytics training for years, but the emerging advanced degree programs add instruction in the use of analytic and business intelligence tools to produce useful information from petabytes of data collected from social media sites, sensors, transaction records, mobile applications and other sources.”
PepsiCo is another large company that has recently seen the value of data analytics. “PepsiCo Acquires a Taste for Data Analytics” shares an interview with PepsiCo‘s Global Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Business Information Solutions Caroline Watteeuw.
Watteeuw explains one of the company’s new products:
“We are betting on what we call SMAC. It is Social, Mobile, Advanced and Immersive Analytics, Cloud. There are a couple of things that are not relevant for PepsiCo but interesting. I call them comeback kids. If you go back 15 years when Xerox was at its peak, it was all about very precise ink-jet printers. Right now, people are trying to use ink-jet printer technology and refocus it on creating organs (researchers at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, for instance, are using modified ink-jet technology to build tissue and organ prototypes). It is absolutely phenomenal. Then there are three dimensional maps. You have 3D TV, gaming and printing. 3D maps will allow you to navigate through different layers of geography to do oil and gas exploration in a very different way.”
For those who are interested in getting the most of their big data, there are a variety of companies out there offering cutting edge solutions. We recommend Digital Reasoning for their long standing reputation as a leader in big data analytics that pushes the envelope.
Jasmine Ashton, October 29, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
CIOs Can Harness Company Intelligence with Proper Search Applications
October 23, 2012
An innovative list of CIO strategies regarding industry-specific issues was recently discussed in the article “Ten Strategic CIO Priorities for 2013” on ZDNet. The article was inspired by a list created by Bob Evans, senior vice-president of communications for Oracle Corp. Instead of a typical listing of hardware products and software applications, Evans’ strategy areas are meaningful and actionable.
Evans’ ideas include: “Unleash Your Company’s Intelligence: Create the Enterprise-Wide Opportunity Chain” and “Transform Big Data into Big Insights, Big Vision, and Big Opportunity.”
The article’s author comments on the list of priorities:
“Instead of a litany telling people how to spend money, this collection describes the goals and issues that help a CIO drive value in today’s world. For many CIO’s, these points represent the future path forward; when I talk with innovative CIOs — the best and most forward thinking — it’s obvious the issues are exciting because they hold the key to really helping drive benefit to the company.”
For CIOs who want to deliver results and unleash their company’s intelligence as advised by the Oracle guru, these priorities can be met through Intrafind’s search applications. To create the enterprise-wide opportunity chain, effective information retrieval from unstructured and structured enterprise data is needed. Intrafind provides the products and consultancy services that will transform strategy into results.
Andrea Hayden, October 23, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Summary: October 12 to October 18
October 22, 2012
This week the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog posted some informative stories regarding the state of big data analytics technology and its impact on marketers and retailers.
“Big Data Particularly Useful for Marketers” examines businesses can mine data that they are already collecting in order to increase revenue. The pressure to create a marketing strategy that is both customer and market driven is intense, and it has caused many marketers to turn to analytics solutions for aid:
“Marketing analytics used in conjunction with big data will help many organizations properly evaluate their marketing performance, gain insight into their clients’ purchasing habits, market trends and needs and make evidence-based marketing decisions. As one example, look at how politicians are using big data to identify their target audience and reach out to the so-called “silent majority.”
“Using Big Data Analytics to Predict Consumer Behavior” is another article that discusses the impact that big data analytics has on marketers. It examines changes in consumer behavior. Now, instead of marketers running the show, it is the customers who are leading market trends.
The article predicts:
“In the not-too-distant future, you will be able, for example, to change your contact information with many vendors at once, rather than many times, over and over, at many different websites. You will declare your own policies, preferences and terms of engagement—and do it in ways that can be automated both for you and the companies you engage. You will no longer have to “accept” agreements that aren’t worth reading because, as we all know, they cover the other party’s butt but expose yours.
In addition to your personal tool kit, you’ll have software that can knit together your apps with the services offered by companies, saving work for you and creating business for them—all in real time.”
Many smaller companies that are new to the analytics scene are choosing to invest in Google Analytics over some other solutions. “Google Analytics for Dummies” shares an article that provides a step-by-step look at how to use Google Analytics to determine the success of your sight.
However, the author explains:
“Google analytics are meaningless if you can not take the information it gathers and make necessary changes on your web site. Not everyone realizes this, but there are other companies out there that offer even more comprehensive analytics services than Google. Digital Reasoning has spent the past decade creating automated understanding for big data. Its flagship product Synthesys addresses big data challenges in the enterprise market – including Financial Services, Healthcare, Insurance Fraud, Electronic Discovery, and Enterprise Risk.”
Digital Reasoning is a company that has been working in the data analysis and management field to create a solution that takes the pressure off employees and automates the process. Synthesys is used by marketers worldwide to understand market trends and gain valuable insights into customer behavior.
Jasmine Ashton, October 22, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IT Sets Information Delivery Into Motion with Enterprise Search Technology
October 15, 2012
Big Data has caused a chain reaction in the business world and new software developments have required IT departments to scramble to keep up and re-establish their importance. Why? Innovative information intelligence platforms can now perform and replace basic IT functions and increase company ROI by cutting man-hour costs.
Despite the proven efficiency of programming, Information Age’s article “The New Business Intelligence” feels that some human intervention is still needed to maintain quality control:
The IT department is still responsible for maintaining the consistency of data, imposing common data definitions, and incorporating new sources of data, so that as businesses change, users will still have the data they need to get their jobs done. There needs to be the kind of collaboration between the business and IT that means that, even if IT is not directly involved in a BI deployment, there has at least been the opportunity for IT professionals to stress the importance of governance and data quality.
Information intelligence software would require the company’s individual criteria to be programmed in order to function efficiently and generate ROI, so the article was somewhat on point. However, once the parameters are set, IT can take a vacation with software solutions such as PolySpot in place as their technology delivers information.
Jennifer Shockley, October 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Top Stories: October 5 to October 11
October 15, 2012
This week’s top stories from the IntelTrax advanced intelligence blog focused on the impact of big data analytics solutions on a multitude of different industries.
According to “New Pike Research Report Analyzes Smart Grid Analytics” there will be a spike in smart grid data analytics spending that is forecasted to reach more than $34 billion. The bulk of this spending, which will occur worldwide, will be in the Asian Pacific.
When describing the report, the article states:
“This Pike Research report analyzes the global market opportunity for smart grid data analytics across four key solution segments: meter analytics, grid analytics, asset analytics, and renewables integration for business intelligence, operations, and customer management. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of the demand drivers, business models, policy factors, and technology issues associated with the rapidly-developing market for smart grid data analytics. Key industry players are profiled in depth and worldwide revenue and capacity forecasts, segmented by application and region, extend through 2020.”
“Expert Suggests You Ask Your Analytics Vendor the Tough Questions” explains the importance of advocating for yourself and your business by asking the hard questions when choosing between a myriad of solutions that solve the same or similar data management problems.
The article states:
“SAP customers looking at the possibility of deploying text analytics software within their operations should be diligent about asking vendors lots of questions, according to one expert.
Giving vendors the third degree is especially important when shopping for text analytics technology because there is a wide range of offerings on the market at various levels of maturity, said Hanns Koehler-Kruener, a research director with Stamford, Conn.-based IT research firm Gartner Inc.
Additionally, text analytics technology is still emerging into the mainstream and therefore terminology and performance expectations will vary from vendor to vendor. As a result, the only real way to find out if a particular text analytics product meets specific needs is through questioning and trial and error, the analyst said.”
While most companies see big data as a huge benefit when channeled appropriately, consumers may see it as a threat to their privacy. “The Threat of Big Data” explains how big data can be misused.
The article states:
“What those breadcrumbs tell is the story of your life. It tells what you’ve chosen to do. That’s very different than what you put on Facebook. What you put on Facebook is what you would like to tell people, edited according to the standards of the day. Who you actually are is determined by where you spend time, and which things you buy. Big data is increasingly about real behavior, and by analyzing this sort of data, scientists can tell an enormous amount about you. They can tell whether you are the sort of person who will pay back loans. They can tell you if you’re likely to get diabetes.”
Whether you are looking to utilize big data for good or evil, there are companies out there that are willing to help your company harness data. Digital Reasoning uses automated understanding to take the pressure off employees and gain valuable insights from big data.
Jasmine Ashton, October 15, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Connotate Adds PDF Extraction Function
October 12, 2012
PDF files often pose challenges for those extracting data from these types of documents, but Connotate is announcing added capabilities that will make this process easier for users. According to the article “Connotate Expands Automation Solution to Include Precise PDF Extraction” on Market Watch, the provider of automated data solutions is expanding capabilities that will allow data extraction from unstructured flat-file documents and transform them into higher-value structured content.
The article informs us about the changes at the company and the need for the technology in the market:
“‘In listening to our customer base, we heard very clearly the need for automated collection and transformation of more types of data — and PDF extraction was at the top of the list,’ said Isai Shenker, vice president of product management for Connotate. ‘We are delighted to offer a proven solution to meet this need by working with our partner, Khemeia Technologies.’”
This PDF extraction function will benefit numerous industries, as these documents are used often in financial reporting, legal services, publishing, and government documentation. We applaud Connotate in the unique and highly demanded technology, which will enable organizations to process higher volumes of data, likely reducing costs and generating revenue.
Andrea Hayden, October 12, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Connotate Partners for Crowdsourcing
October 11, 2012
Crowdsourcing.org recently reported on a new crowdsourcing partnership in the article, “Connotate and CrowdSource Partner to Offer Comprehensive Solutions for Capturing Competitive Intelligence Data for the Web.”
According to the article, Connotate and CrowdSource, two leaders in the fields of automated data collection and crowdsourcing, have chosen to collaborate to to offer more options for companies seeking cost-efficient ways to leverage Web data for business advantage.
Matt Jacobson, VP of Channels and Operations for Connotate, said of the partnership:
“We are seeing a real surge in demand for Connotate to collect competitor pricing and product data from the Web. In cases where product matching is particularly complex, crowdsourcing complements Connotate’s automated approach — and the resulting combination produces a superior solution. Our partnership with CrowdSource allows us to offer our customers a wide range of options to best meet their needs.”
By combining crowdsourcing with automated data collecting, these two companies will be able to offer solutions that accomplish formerly labor intensive tasks at unprecedented speeds and quality.
Jasmine Ashton, October 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Endeca Set to Enrich Oracle Business Intelligence Solutions
October 8, 2012
It may be obvious that Oracle’s purchase of Endeca allows the tech behemoth to incorporate unstructured data like social media, log files and text documents into their business intelligence framework. Emtec‘s blog gets more specific in the post by Jamal Syed, “What Endeca Adds to the Oracle BI Bag of Tools. . . .” The write up tells us:
“Endeca enables users to iteratively model the data as it suits them. IT does not have to perform traditional data modeling on the data before it can be available for end users. Endeca combines structured and unstructured data from disparate systems (inside or outside the company) and automatically organizes the information for search, discovery and analysis. This makes Oracle Endeca the only BI technology that unifies structured content and social media for analysis.”
For now, anyway. For those familiar with using Essbase as a data source with the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Syed includes this caveat:
“The Endeca integration will not be as simple because of the unstructured nature of the data. Harnessing the power of Endeca’s search engine that utilizes breadcrumbs instead of keywords will be a challenge- but will provide huge benefits to Oracle BI.”
Syed expects to see a unified platform arise from this union within the next year. Endeca was founded in 1999, and developed into a leader in faceted search before being snapped up by Oracle last year.
Cynthia Murrell, October 08, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Top Stories: September 28 to October 4
October 8, 2012
Lately, the IntelTrax information and advanced intelligence blog has been covering a lot of stories related to risk analytics.
The October 4 post “Risk Analytics Becomes Big Business” explains how the days of manually entering data into spreadsheets are over and how risk can now be quantified and lowered with the use of analytics technology.
The article give an example of a company using analytics to mitigate risk:
“Numerix (http://www.numerix.com/), the leading provider of cross-asset analytics for derivatives valuations and risk management today announced that Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), a pioneer in the Luxembourg financial industry has selected the Numerix CrossAsset analytics platform to support its model validation and model comparison processes. With Numerix’s highly flexible, fully transparent analytics architecture, BIL can conduct rigorous model analysis to independently validate pricing and risk sensitivity outputs, as well as make comparisons between different models to analyze how the outputs vary under different assumptions.”
Another article that emphasizes the financial impacts of data analytics is, “Effective Financial Data Analytics Rely on Quality.” This article discusses how important it is to utilize statisticians and data preparation along with a business’s strategy to form predictive models.
The article states:
“A critical aspect therefore is identifying what data is needed for effective prediction – and what data ends up actually being available and used to build the models. Most analysts can’t fix data – therefore they do the next best thing statistically, which is dropping or avoiding poor quality data.
Data analytics touches nearly all aspects of a business and it’s nearly impossible to achieve effective business intelligence without it.”
The Financial sector is not the only one that is using data analytics technology. It appears that the government is jumping on board the big data wagon as well. “Government and Utilities Get Big Data” explains how analytics spending has gone up quite a bit in the business world.
The article states:
“Utilities must solve data collection and storage challenges and learn how to analyze and act on new forms of information before they even get to the point of realizing real returns on their smart grid investments.
According to a new report from Pike Research, a part of Navigant‘s Energy Practice, the worldwide market for smart grid data analytics is expected to grow steadily through 2020, with cumulative worldwide spending from 2012 through 2020 totaling just over $34 billion.”
One company that has worked to provide data analytics technology for both the government and financial enterprises is Digital Reasoning. Digital Reasoning uses automated understanding to tackle some of big data’s most messy challenges by enabling enterprises and agencies to detect fraud, uncover market trends, gain better insight into customer behavior, gain competitive advantage, and mitigate risk.
Jasmine Ashton, October 8, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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